Suicide is maternal.

Feeding is at the heart of living. Feeding is the basic law of Nature as the law of self-preservation. How might an animal be induced to violate the law? What principle of death would override the principle of living?

A Fox News Science article begins, “The insect world may have found its Mom of the Year in the female Stegodyphus lineatus, a desert spider that feeds herself to her young shortly after they’re hatched.” How is this possible?

The babies crawl all over her head, trying to get at the liquid that is leaking from her face. She makes no attempt to escape as her young eventually pierce her soft abdomen with their mouths before feasting on the liquefied guts inside. This process takes a few hours, at the end of which their mom is officially dead.

A researcher continues, “I know it looks ‘disgusting’ for someone who is not familiar, but it shows the amazing way evolution and natural selection work. It is amazing to think that this behavior has evolved as the best way (evolutionarily) for a female to reach a high reproductive success by ‘giving herself to her young’. It really shows how the natural world is remarkable.”

Take and eat, said the spider. This is my body.

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Walt Bonner, “‘Mom of the Year?’ Mother Spider Feeds itself to Babies,” Fox News (May 7, 2015).