Meet Five Cannibal Animals that Eat Their Mates
- www.pixabay.com/CSITDMS
VIVA – Like humans, animals also need partners to breed or fulfill their needs. However, what if there are animals that eat their own mates to survive? If so, what are they?
In the animal world, mating can indeed lead to death due to fighting between males. In addition, a more surprising fact is that cannibalism in animals can happen such that they kill their mates and then eat them.
This is mostly done by female animals because they need a lot of energy to give birth to children and get energy. Well, here are five cannibal animals that eat their mates.
1. Praying Mantis
Belalang sembah.
- U-Report
An insect that displays sexual cannibalism is the mantis, although not all species practice it. Compared with male mantises, females are much bigger and stronger, and this makes it easy to capture their prey. Females send out a chemical signal of pheromones to attract males.
When the male attempts to mate with the female, it is prone to be attacked. Even if the male mantis is decapitated by the female, the male is still able to mate, as nerves in its abdomen control the body. Giving birth takes a lot of energy from the female, as she may lay about 100 eggs.
Therefore, eating the male gives the female the required nutrition to birth its offspring. Some species of mantis can reproduce asexually in a process called parthenogenesis, and eating the male can fuel this process.
2. Scorpion
Kalajengking
- www.pixabay.com/41330
Scorpion is one of the cannibal animals that that might eat their mates. The mother invests a great amount of time and energy in her offspring, birthing as many as 100 in a single brood.
Unlike most nonmammalian animals, scorpions are viviparous, giving birth to live young instead of laying eggs. This takes even more energy. Because of this, males that remain near females after mating are sometimes killed and eaten, which provides sustenance to the female. As a last resort, scorpion mothers may even eat their offspring to survive.
