9 animals that eat their partners

Animals are fascinating, they live to survive. So strong is their survival instinct that they might even kill their mates to sustain themselves. Giving birth to offspring is a tiring process and females get the required nutrients and energy to survive by eating their mates and in some cases even their little ones. Take a look at 9 wild animals that are capable of this feat.

The bigger adult female Mantis is known to eat their male partners during the mating process for nutrition sake. This behavior, however, doesn’t deter the male mantis. Though they try to escape as soon as the mating process is over, a lot of them still end up being eaten.

Male octopuses have a modified arm which are responsible for injecting sperms into females. After this the females usually eat the male octopus. Also, a lot of species of male octopus die after mating. It is also not unheard of in octopuses for hatchlings to eat each other.

Female scorpions may give birth to as many as 100 offspring in a single brood. They don't lay eggs rather give birth which takes all their energy. So it is said that females eat their male mates after the mating process is over and might even eat her children to sustain herself.

Female Green Anacondas are polyandrous, they mate with several male Anacondas at a time and since their gestation period is long their movement is limited. So, females often end up eating their male mates after the mating process to sustain themselves.

Male spiders need to dance well to impress female spiders to mate with them. The male spider will jump around creating a song by beating parts of its body together. If the female likes the song it may mate with the spider and if not the males can end up being eaten.

Male Black Widows are smaller than the female ones. For the mating process the male has to place certain body parts between the fangs of female Widow Spider, which makes them prone to be eaten. This, however, happens only in captivity.

While these creatures don’t kill while mating but females feed on males’ fleshy hind legs and ingest a material called hemolymph, that comes out of the wounds of male crickets’.

A species of hermaphroditic sea slug(no male or female), found in Australia, stab their partners on the forehead while mating.

Male Labord's Chameleons are animals that first fight with other males to get chosen for mating with a male and then the couple fight too while mating. This fight is fatal enough to kill both males and females.