Jane and John Does Sharing the Meal
This morning, I had a chance to observe the communal feeding of one of the couples from the culture. This behavior was a surprising one as it was not reported before in the literature. I think I have mentioned this before in the previous post. It began when I threw a live medium-size mealworm last night. The female started to curl around it and threw a line of wrapping threads onto the mealworm. This lasted for about 20 minutes but she did not feed on it. I was hoping she would do so but nothing happened. So, I let it do whatever she wanted with the meal. This morning after I woke up, I found that she was enjoyably eating the mealworm by sucking the food dry. Well, at least, she finally started to feed after the 1-hour mating ritual!. Then, before breakfast, I again made a quick check on her and I found she has somehow lifted up the meal to the center and gesturing like a signal to the male while he was at the bottom facing her. To my surprise, the male started to feed at the tip of the mealworm on the other side and now, they are sharing the food together!. What a sweet couple they are lol!
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