Safe sex: The male nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis) will bring a silk-wrapped insect to a female prior to mating so she will eat the gift—instead of him.
Safer sex: The funnel-web spider Agelenopsis aperta has a different approach, putting the female into a cataleptic state before mating so she won’t cannibalize him. Scientists at Radford University in Virginia say the A. aperta male can disable the female from 4.5 centimeters (about 2 inches), suggesting he maybe deploying a gas to knock out the femme fatale.