SUCKLING spiderlings enjoy a “nutritious” milk from their mothers that has four times the protein of cow’s milk.
That’s according to Chinese scientists who say they’ve discovered that a strange species of jumping spider feeds its young just like mammals.
Nursing at the teat is generally seen as a mammalian trait – shared by humans, cows and cats alike – but it turns out spiders do it too.
At least that’s the case with Toxeus Magnus, a type of jumping spider that has evolved to look like an ant.
The species’ spiderlings are “entirely dependent” on what’s been described as “nutritious spider milk”.
This milk is secreted and fed to them by their mothers right through into their teenage years, according to new research published in the journal Science.
The milk is said to have four times the amount of protein as you’d find in cow’s milk.
Spider mothers will care for their spiderlings by feeding them the fluid, even after they’re able to forage on their own.
The research, led by Zhanqi Chen at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that the “peculiar” behaviour is similar to lactation in mammals.
It also suggests that “long-term, milk-provisioning maternal care” could be more common in the animal kingdom than previously thought.
Mammals typically produce their own nutritional substances, and then nurse their young until they can fend for themselves.
Providing milk in this way is seen outside of mammals in the animal kingdom.
But have it happen so regularly and so often has always been considered as a mammal-exclusive trait.
Chen and his colleagues found the results puzzling, but that didn’t make it any less true.
Observations in a lab showed that young spiderlings would drink from droplets deposited on the nest’s surface.
Then eventually they would begin directly “suckling” on the mother spider’s egg-laying opening.
Chen claims that the spiderlings stayed in the nest, nursing on spider milk, for nearly 40 days – just before they reached sexual maturity.
And they also said that nursing wasn’t “critical” to survival for the spiders once they became independent, but that it “greatly assured their overall health and adult survival”.
MOST READ IN SCIENCE
Scientists also reckon that this nursing process was important for maintaining sufficient numbers of adult female spiders.
Mothers are believed to have treated all spiderlings the same, but only daughters were allowed to return to the breeding nest after sexual maturity.
Would you be tempted by a cold refreshing glass of spider’s milk? Let us know in the comments!
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News Pictures Baby spiders suckle milk from their mums – and it’s got FOUR TIMES the protein of cow’s milk
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