Washington (AFP) - A team of Chinese scientists has discovered that male spiders of the species Philoponella prominense flee immediately after mating to avoid being killed and eaten by their mates.

During the mating process, the spiders use two of their legs to propel themselves within a fraction of a second, leaning on the female spider. The technique was described for the first time in a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology.

This discovery required the use of high-speed and high-resolution cameras, said lead study author Xing Shang Dzhang of Hubei University in China.

The researchers were conducting a study on the sexual choices of this species, which lives in groups of up to 300 spiders.

Of the 155 matings studied, in 152 the male spider ran away and subsequently survived the encounter with its mate.

As for the three males that did not walk quickly, their companions killed and ate them.

The 30 spiders that the researchers prevented from escaping met the same fate, and the scientists concluded that this mechanism is necessary for males to escape from female spiders.

Xingshang Dzhang noted that female spiders judge the males' sexual ability based on their ability to escape.

He explained, "The male spider, through mating, can escape sexual predation for the female, who chooses the spider that has high sexual performance, because this is directly related to the male's physical condition."

Female spiders have the ability to retain sperm and choose whether or not to use it to fertilize their eggs.

Thus, females choose sperm from males with high sexual performance, according to Xing Shang. In the future, the scientist would like to study the possibility that there is an actual link between male jumps and mating success.