As one of the digest's foremost arachnophiles, I feel bound to answer this question. Grab the nearest spider and take a close look. You'll see that in addition to its 8 legs, it has two little leg-like organs sticking out of its face. These are its pedipalps. In a male spider, the tip of the pedipalp is swollen and bulgy (this is the easiest & fastest way to sex a spider, should you have the need). This swelling conceals a highly complicated system of pumps & tubes & locking mechanisms.
When a male spider feels the "need to breed", he spins a little tiny web (smaller than his body). Then, he squirts out a mass of semen onto the web (like most critters, his sperm & semen are formed in his abdomen, and he squirts out the stuff from a little porthole beneath his abdomen). He then turns around and uses his pedipalps to slurp up the semen into their hollow interiors, where the sperm will be stored for quite some time.
Next step -- the male spider goes looking for a nubile female. Problems arise now. Here's why:
So, the male has to be _very_ careful when approaching a female. Male spiders practice an amazing number of tricks & subterfuges when approaching females in attempts to not be eaten. Jumping spiders have brightly-colored, even metallic, palps & fangs that they display in a sort of dance to dissuade the female hunger. Crab spiders engage in bondage -- they tie up their females with silk before mating. Some pluck the female's web threads in a special code. Some males even capture a fly, and offer the fly to the female -- while the female's eating the fly, the male gets to have his way with her. Some males, if they can't find a fly, will instead make a "fake fly" in a tangled mass of silk. The female, fooled by the package, lets the male mate while she picks through the silk, looking for the fly. (And yes, when she doesn't find the fly, she's angry and the male has to beat a fast retreat.) Male tarantulas give the female a massage that seems to hypnotize her.
Anyway, using whatever technique seems suitable, the female is made docile. Facing the female head on, the male then takes his palps and inserts them into the females genital opening, which is on the abdomen's underside, near the front. Using alternating pumping motions, he then pumps his sperm into her. It looks a lot like fist-f**king. During the process, the female seems very calm and relaxed, almost docile. Presumably she enjoys it.
The instant he finishes, he has to leap away with alacrity, as many female spiders will now consider him no more than a fine source of protein. At one time it was believed that the Black Widow invariably killed her mate. It was then decided that she only killed her mate under unnatural laboratory conditions. Research has now been determined that she only kills her mate when she is _hungry_. Many male black widows will live in the female's web for several weeks after mating. Of course, eventually she starts feeling peckish and ...
Aspects of this mating system have got to have useful applications to someone in Glorantha. One obvious point is that female trolls are highly carnivorous, too. Perhaps males tend to bring gifts to appease potential mates.
Sandy Petersen
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