Four new species of tarantula have been discovered – and if they knew the name they were going to get, they might have presented themselves sooner.
The males are so well-endowed that scientists essentially named them the ‘genital king.’
Spiders don’t really have penises, in the traditional sense. Instead, they use arm-like structures called palps to grab sperm from ducts in their abdomen, which is then inserted into the genital opening of a female. It sounds like barely a fraction of the romance or fun that many other animals enjoy, but it gets the job done.
Males of the newly described species boast the longest palps of all known tarantulas. The largest gets up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) long – almost as long as its legs, and 3.85 times longer than its carapace. By comparison, most tarantula species sport palps merely twice as long as their carapace.
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The four new species were grouped into a brand new genus, which now also includes a fifth species that was previously described but placed in a different genus.
“Based on both morphological and molecular data, they are so distinct from their closest relatives that we had to establish an entirely new genus to classify them, and we named it Satyrex,” says Alireza Zamani, arachnologist at the University of Turku in Finland.
They’re named after satyrs, male nature spirits from ancient Greek mythology known for their bawdy behavior and prominent packages. The end of it, rex, is Latin for ‘king’, as popularized by the likes of Oedipus and Tyrannosaurus.
The largest of the new species is Satyrex ferox, with its specific name meaning ‘fierce’ thanks to its aggressive nature. The others are S. arabicus and S. somalicus, which are named after the areas they’re found in (the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia, respectively). The fourth is S. speciosus, because of its brighter coloration.
As for why the spiders are proudly packing, it might be a matter of self-preservation.
“We have tentatively suggested that the long palps might allow the male to keep a safer distance during mating and help him avoid being attacked and devoured by the highly aggressive female,” says Zamani.
The research was published in the journal ZooKeys.
