Spider Sex - Yes! Yes!! YES!!!

As an arachnophobe (see Do I Get a Badge for This?), the title alone, Spider Cries Out During Sex, was enough to give me a powerful case of the heebie jeebies. Then I started reading the article from Live Science:

While mating, female Physocylus globosus spiders emit high-frequency squeaks to let males know what they should be doing, a new study finds.

Called stridulations, the shrill cries sound like squeaky leather and are made in response to the rhythmic squeezing actions of the male's genitalia from inside the female during sex.

But wait! There's more! You can listen to the audio of the female spider here and watch spider porn here. Curiously, the introductions of the audio and video are quite grand with images of space and soaring music in contrast to the main event. The spiders really don't do much other than make that noise. **shudder** Now please excuse me while I ram a couple of sharpened No. 2 pencils in my ears to stop the sound of spider love squeals.

Addendum: Thank you so very very much (grrrrr), John W., for alerting me to PZ's Spider Kama Sutra. This was posted earlier this year before we bonobos brachiated over to Science Blogs so in my dotage, I missed it. I made myself look, and yet I could not look away. Now I have vivid kinky images of the arachnid version of Plato's Retreat scuttling around in my head. GAAAAAAAH!!!