Four female insects that kill their mates after intercourse

For humans and some animals, recreational intercourse can be fun. Even procreative intercourse among primates and some mammals is thought to provide pleasure for the participants.

But for some animal species, it can be a life or death affair. Imagine being killed because you showed a desire for, or immediately after intercourse with the opposite sex.

While this is a rare behaviour among humans, it is a lifestyle for some animals.

According to Wikipedia, this behaviour is believed to have developed as a manifestation of sexual conflict occurring when the reproductive interests of the male and female differ.

Another reason animals kill each other after sex is because their distinction between hungry and flirty is blurred.

The act of killing before, during and after intercourse is called sexual cannibalism.

Here are female animals and insects you probably didn’t know kill their male counterpart during or after intercourse:

Drone Bees

Drone bees are the male bees in a bee colony. In bee colonies, there are three types of bees: a queen bee, worker bees which are females, and drone bees which are males.

While these worker bees fly from flower to flower collecting pollen and returning home to the hive to make honey, the drone bees do not participate in collecting of nectar or pollen and they do not even sting. Their only interest is to mate with a receptive queen.

Drone bees are sometimes driven out of the colony by worker bees. This is to ensure that there is enough food for the queen, the workers and the bee larvae, or babies.

Drone bees’ only job is to mate with the queen so that she can lay eggs for future bees. Even when their job seems pretty much easy, the life of a drone bee is very difficult and short.

They do not live for more than 90 days. They automatically die when they mate with the queen bee. They mate with the queen while flying. If a drone bee succeeds in mating with the queen, the first thing that happens is that all of the drone’s blood in its body will rush to its endophallus and causes it lose control over its entire body.

What happens next is that its body will fall away, leaving a portion of his endophallus attached to the queen which helps guide the next drone in the queen.

Also, a queen mating yard must have many drones to be successful. Drone bees have bigger bodies than worker bees, but are usually smaller than the queen.

Black widow spider

This specie of spiders is notorious. The scientific name is Latrodectus and it is carnivorous with an average life span of 1 to 3 years. The male counterparts typically live for 1 to 2 months.

According to National Geographic website, its venom is reported to be 15 times stronger than that of rattlesnake’s. When it bites a human, it produces muscle aches and nausea. It also paralyses the diaphragm and makes breathing difficult.

While its bites can cause no serious damage, let alone death , it can be fatal usually to small children, elderly, or the infirm. Fortunately, fatalities are fairly rare. The spiders are nonaggressive and bite only in self-defense especially when someone accidentally sits on them.

The spiders, which are typically dark brown or shiny black in colour, have a red hourglass on their abdomen.

In mating ritual, these female black widow spiders devour and eat their male counterparts after mating in a macabre behaviour which explains the males’ short lifespans and also what gave the insect the name Black widow.

Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis has saw like arms and alien eyes and they do not pose any threat unless it happens to be a gecko, insect, or hummingbird.

The females are frequently larger than males. Praying mantis courtship can be a dangerous affair. Females have been well documented biting off the heads and eating other body parts of the males that they mate with for nourishment.

Although, not all the praying mantis species cannibalise their mates, if the female is starving or if the male irritates her, she might engage in that behaviour.

A study published in 2016 found that female praying mantis species that exhibit cannibalism of their mates make a meal out of the males between 13 and 28 percent of the time.

They acquire amino acids that are then incorporated into the eggs they lay. Making them lay twice as many eggs after cannibalizing a male.

The Bachelor Midge

Midge is any small fly, including species in several families of non-mosquito.

The male Bachelor Midge suffers during copulation. During mating, the female sucks the blood from the male, causing its genital to break off inside the female. All for evolutionary benefit, because it prevents other males from impregnating the female. Ideally, the male sacrifice guarantees its offspring.

The First Settlers in Nigeria And Where They Migrated From

The First settlers where the Igbo tribe

Eri, Nri's god-like founder, is believed to have settled the region after in the 13th century around 948 with other related Igbo cultures. He was followed directly by the first Eze Nri (King of Nri), ifikuánim. His reign commenced in 1043, according to the oral tradition of Igbo.

Where they Migrated from

Eri was said to have emigrated thousands of years ago from Egypt with a group of companions just before the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.

Eri and his group were said to have traveled by water and finally arrived at the confluence of the rivers Ezu and Omambala, located in Aguleri, Anambra State, today.

The first king of Nri

The first Eze Nri (King of Nri) Ãfikuánim followed him. His reign commenced in 1043, according to the oral tradition of Igbo. At least one historian later places the reign of Ãfikuánim, around 1225 AD. Each king traces his or her origin back to Eri, the founding ancestor.

Biblical evidence describes the father of all igbos

Eri, the father of all Igbos was the fifth son of Gad, the seventh son of Jacob (Genesis 46:15-18 and Numbers 26:16:18), who hailed from Israel.

He migrated with a group of companions from Egypt, just before the Israelites' exodus from Egypt many centuries ago.

This was the biblical evidence that the first settlers in Nigeria were igbos and they were Israelites that travelled down all the way from Egypt.

Archeological Evidence

There is evidence of human presence in the Late Stone Age (Latin Paleolithic) from at least 10,000 years ago. Early settlement of Igboland is dated to 6,000 BC based on pottery found in Okigwe, Oka Igwe, and today known as Awka.

In 1978 a team led by Thurstan Shaw excavated a rock quarry with the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. We noticed it was a mine for making axes and pottery for a nearby Ibagwa 'stone culture.'

Anthropologists at the University of Benin have found fossils and the use of monoliths dating from 4500 BC in the Okigwe region of Ugwelle-Uturu.

In what researchers believe may be a Nsukka metal cultural region from 3000 BC, and later settlements attributed to Ngwa culture at 8-18 AD, further evidence of ancient settlements has been discovered.

Which cultural relations exist between these pre-historic artefacts and the people of the area today is unknown.

Igbo-Ukwu Finds (AD 300-900)

In 1939, when a resident named Isiah Anozie found them in the process of digging a cistern, the first Igbo Ukwu metal and valuable artefact discoveries were accidentally made.

9th century ritual Bronze vessel of igbo-ukwu

This led to the discovery of a greater network of 9th century linked metal works. The works were based at Ukwu Igbo.

Bronze from the 9th century town igboukwu

Further findings were found in 1959–60 by archaeology teams led by Thurstan Shaw and in Jonah Anozie 's compound in 1964.

Igbo trade routes of the early second millennium reached the cities of Mecca , Medina and Jeddah through a network of trade routes traveled by intermediaries.

Beads originating in India in the 9th century were found in the burial sites of Igbo Ukwu: thousands of glass beads were uncovered from the ruined remains of the garments of a nobleman.

According to indigenous history, the burial site was associated with the Nri Kingdom which began around the same century.

Kingdom of NRI (900-c. 1560)

The Northern Igbo Kingdom of Nri, rising around the 10th century based on the traditions of Umunri, is credited with founding much of the culture , customs, and religious practices of Igboland.

It is present-day Nigeria's oldest existing monarchy. It was around the mid-10th century that, according to Umunri lore, the divine figure Eri had migrated to the basin of the river Anambra (Igbo: Omambara) — specifically at its meeting with the river Ezu, known as Ezu na Omambara in Aguleri today.