Spiders

[Tshokwane]

(11-26-2018, 12:30 PM)Spalea Wrote: why is there this kind of hairs concretion at the end of the front leg/paw ? To mask the claw ? Or because of the ground nature ?

Those are called pedipalps.

They look like little legs and are tactile organs; they feel the ground with them, they manipulate food with them and, for males, those are very important organs, because they use them for sex.

That's why you'll see that males have larger pedipalps; when they're copulating, the male has to be quick because most females are not only bigger than them, but extremely agressive and many times use them for food. So, when he's busy trying not to get killed while they copulate and he says to her ooh lala mon chérie, the male lets out a blob of semen, catches it with a pedipalp and the introduces the semen inside the female's genitalia.

So it's a very, very important organ for a male.

Here, look at the difference between the male's and female's pedipalps.

This is the female

*This image is copyright of its original author

and this is the  male.

*This image is copyright of its original author

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