Search Here

Now here is an exciting, if appalling, game played by the males of a newly discovered jumping spider species, Jotus remus. It's a peekaboo game to lure the ladies, according to National Geographic.

Now this is what he does. The male burrows under a leaf and pushes his heart-shaped paddle structure on either side of his third legs to a height so that the female on the other side can spot it.

This is unique, because there is no other known spider species that plays the game or has such built-in paddles on its legs.

It was another unique male of the human species who discovered it---Jürgen Otto, a spider enthusiast from the Australian government, a "mite expert", who went on a camping spree to a Sydney national park.

He found the spider late 2014 as a gift between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

At first Otto didn't know where it came from, so he returned to the camping site and collected more specimens, according to New Scientist. It isn't known whether the spider is widespread or not.

"It might be that it's unique to the mountaintop area where I found it, but who knows?" Otto said.

Why does his spider play the game, anyway? Some scientists feel that the lady will begin to chase the male, then get exhausted and will give in to mating with him, said the Daily Mail,

Otto, though, doesn't believe that the gallivant happens.

"This is not the case. I watched female and males engaging in this way for many hours and regardless of how long the male tried a female that attacked him would not mate. So it seems tiredness plays no role," he said. "What mattered was whether or not a female was virgin and therefore receptive."

The findings were published in the Jan. 7 issue of Peckhamia.

YouTube/Peacockspiderman