A lot of people are asking why I’m painting spiders. It’s because I’m currently running an experiment where I have two males, one infected and one healthy, courting one female simultaneously (to see whether she will choose the healthy male over the sick one). I have to mark them with paint to keep track of which male is which. You can see the little paint dots on their back.
I really want to know the outcome
Well I’ve run about 10 trials so far, and I can tell you that anecdotally, the males are more interested in courting each other than in courting the female. Definitely not what I was expecting…
THIS JUST IN: gay spiders confirmed by science
(Source: http://cthuloops.tumblr.com/)