Spider Milk Is Real and Their Babies Love It, New Study Shows
Source: Gizmodo
Spider Milk Is Real and Their Babies Love It, New Study Shows
Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Yesterday 2:00pm
Jumping spider mothers provide milk to their spiderlings far into development, according to a new study that might turn your understanding of invertebrate parenting on its head.
Animals offer all sorts of provisions to their offspring, be it through regurgitation, unfertilized eggs, or in extreme cases, their own flesh. But specialized milk-like secretions are something erroneously attributed to solely mammals—other non-mammals and even invertebrates produce milk-like secretions, too. What’s exciting about this new study is not only the fact that spiders produce milk, but how long they provide it for.
“It sets up interesting questions about why this happens in the first place,” Nathan Morehouse, assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati who was not involved with the study, told Gizmodo. “Why are these spiders acting like college kids returning home to live with their parents?”
We often think about invertebrates as robotic beings that reproduce and eat and that’s it, but this is not really the case. Spiders care for their young in various ways—some just guard the eggs, while others will regurgitate food or lay unfertilized “trophic” eggs for newly hatched young to feed on. But jumping spiders providing milk presents an extreme case of invertebrate parental care.
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Read more: https://gizmodo.com/spider-mothers-produce-milk-for-their-young-incredible-1830740895
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Related: Prolonged milk provisioning in a jumping spider (Science)
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