A mother's sacrifice!

The female nursery web spider carries her silk woven egg sac around with her.. with the jaw, and when the eggs are about to hatch she weaves a nursery for the eggs and stands guard to make sure that her offsprings make it, which basically means that she doesn't feed from when she mates until after the young ones "move out".

Therefore she needs a rich meal just before laying her eggs in the sac so as to survive motherhood and be able to protect her offsprings. One could conclude that the male with whom she mates would be the perfect nutritious last meal, but he is one step ahead of her in thinking and actually catches a pray, wrappes it in a silky "gift wrap" bathed in pheromones and stuff to attract the female, and offers it as a nuptial gift to her (well, to save his live..and..) to show her that he is the perfect match for her.

But..before you praise the male for the cleverness you should be aware that a study has shown that around 40% of the nuptial gifts offered by the males are actually totally worthless, of no nutritional value for the female (containing inedible items..and yes a group of researchers actually dissected the gifts carried by males to find out). So if the female doesn't realize the deception before they mate, it can have serious consequenzes.

Therefore if you think that the male nursery web spider is more clever than the female, offering useless gifts to get "easy" sex, then think twice...

Oops that was a long read, and not nearly exhaustive for this interesting creature!

P.s.
Thanks for overwhelming reactions to my 100th blip yesterday