Originally posted June 10, 2010

2+2=Death

June 10, 2010

Okay, so maybe girls “can’t do math” (wink), but what we can do is fight to the death.

Professor Damian O. Elias, a behavioral ecologist at UC Berkeley, headed up a team of researchers studying the fighting styles of the jumping spider, Phidippus clarus.

This North American spider is quite aggressive and both the males and females of the species are known to pick fights regularly. The difference however, lies in their respective approaches. In nature, usually the bigger, stronger or more agile competitor wins out. This is mirrored in the techniques of the male Phidippus clarus, who perform an elaborate evaluation “dance” before they begin in order to determine the strength of their enemy and whether to proceed into an all out brawl. This allows the males to avoid needless injury; if they decide it won’t be a fair fight, they back down.

The female spiders, on the other hand, do no such thing. They skip the introductions entirely, go straight for the blood and the battles usually end in death. And, unlike for the males, the researchers have found no physical clue that regularly predicted the outcome of the female fights. They do postulate that the female aggression is based on their intense need to keep their nests during molting, mating and reproducing (talk about your desperate housewives). Essentially, “In female fights it’s not how big or heavy they are, but how badly they want it,” Elias added. “That trumps size and weight and whether it’s her territory. They fight until they have nothing left.” The team’s findings were published online in the June 4 issue of Behavioral Ecology.

In the ongoing discussion of the “gender-gap”, I’d like to think of the fighting style of these feisty female spiders as a positive thing. Sure, they may die needlessly at times, but they give it their all. And much like the female academic, they do not shy away from a challenge, no matter how big!