Spiders Feast on Blood to Drive Mates Wild

Have you eaten lunch yet?

Even creepy-crawlies like spiders need love too, except they like to do it in their own creep-crawly way. In a recent study of jumping spiders, researchers found that a hefty diet of blood makes a spider irresistible to mates.

Fiona R. Cross and Robert R. Jackson, scientists at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, studied the species Evarcha culicivora by exposing the critters to odors from other spiders who had each been fed different food.

As it turns out, the spiders who were fed a diet of blood-engorged mosquitoes were found the most attractive by members of the opposite sex. In other words, the spiders find blood-breath irresistible.

Researchers believe the study shows that a spider's food odor can communicate their quality as a mate to other spiders. Of course, Cross had an idea about how to possiby relate this to humans.

"It might be like if we all gave off an odor after eating chocolates," she said. "It would only be the people who ate the chocolates with particular centers who smelled particularly attractive."