[00:00] In the middle of baby-making, a female  praying mantis will sometimes chomp down   on a male’s head, then devour him  as she finishes mating with him. And mantises aren’t alone; many  different species lunch on their lovers.
[00:13] it’s almost always the females doing the eating.  Why is it dudes that always end up as dinner? [Kate:] Oh, sorry! This is MinuteEarth.
[00:27] All sorts of critters will occasionally munch  on members of their own species, but here,   we’re talking specifically about when an animal  eats its mate – or potential mate – before,   during, or right after babymaking, which  scientists call “sexual cannibalism”.
[00:42] And – think about it – since females are  the sex that lays the eggs or nurtures   the offspring inside their own bodies,  if a male eats a female before, during,   So any male who regularly dined on his dates  wouldn’t be able to pass along the habit.
[00:59] habit of lunching on their lovers – and  sometimes, that habit really pays off. raise the babies doesn’t make a lot of sense.
[01:12] But in species where males don’t help  out, the female gets left alone to   raise the babies – sometimes a LOT of  babies – which takes a lot of energy. So if a convenient, protein-packed snack is, like,  RIGHT THERE, it benefits her bigtime to chow down.
[01:27] One study found that mantis females  that ate their mates laid more than   twice as many eggs as those that didn’t.  Which might make it seem like mate-eating   helps both female AND male mantises  leave behind a bigger genetic legacy.
[01:40] But since the male ends up dead, his future  prospects are over; if he hadn't been eaten,   he could have gone on to mate again – and  again, leaving way more babies behind. In some cases, though, getting  eaten does seem to benefit males.
[01:54] After redback spiders mate, the  male often somersaults into the   Scientists think this self-sacrifice  evolved because in this species,   the vast majority of males get eaten by  predators before they ever get a chance to mate.
[02:10] So if a male redback does get  lucky enough to actually get lucky,   he might as well sacrifice himself to his mate  to make sure the babies are well-provided for.
[02:22] So we've covered why males get eaten during and  after babymaking, but what’s up with eating a   potential partner before mating, which guarantees  exactly zero offspring from the pair-up? competition is intense, so it really  pays for females to be super aggressive,  
[02:41] and all that innate aggression can accidentally  end up directed toward a potential mate...oops! The bottom line is that, while  it seems unthinkable to us,   sometimes it does make sense for  females to plate their dates.
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