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1 .This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.Got a minute?
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2 .Island View Beach, in British Columbia, has all the makings of a perfect summer outing: great views, seclusion, sand dunes and driftwood.
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3 .There's just one minor detail: That driftwood?
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4 .It hosts two to three black widow spider webs per square meter.
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5 ."To some people a beach full of black widows sounds like a nightmare, but to me it's awesome and it's not scary at all."
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6 .Catherine Scott studies spider behavior at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
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7 .And in case you're wondering: "I've never been bitten by a black widow and I'm not at all concerned about being bitten by a black widow."
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8 .Scott's research brought her to Island View Beach, to study the mating habits of black widow spiders.
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9 .The basics are this: "If you're a male black widow your goal in life is to find a female and mate with her and father as many of her offspring as possible."
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10 .Achieving that goal includes some architectural alterations by the males during their several hours of courtship,
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11 .they snip the female's web to pieces, and then bundle the tattered web in their own silk.
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12 .Scott and her colleagues found that webs treated this way don't attract other prowling males the same way an intact web does.
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13 .Meaning "it's not so much the best male, but the first male to arrive that will win, if he's able to quickly find a female and reduce her web."
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14 .And the reason this tactic works?
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15 .The researchers say females encode pheromones, like chemical "personal ads," in their webs, advertising their age, hunger level and mating status.
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16 .And the first-arriving male's craftsmanship may obscure that information, causing other suitors to pass her by.
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17 .The study is in the journal Animal Behaviour.
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18 .Wondering about the post-coital fate of the males?
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19 .Scott says it's a common misconception that black widows always feast on their mates.
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20 .Males can and do mate with multiple females.
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21 .And besides, black widow females advertise right on their webs how hungry they are.
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22 .So let no male claim that his desire caused him to lose his head.
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23 .Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
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