I'm Laura Larkin, and I work for a wildlife charity called Bug Life.

I'm Kareem Valhead and I also work for Bug Life.

It

looks right, doesn't it?

Dish the dirt.

Well, indeed, the phenomenal success of ants isn't just due to their cooperation.

They can also be very manipulative.

Now, this is particularly in the case of a new queen founding a colony because a new queen, when she leaves the nest in her mating flight, she's got her stored sperm, she's ready to found a new colony.

She hides herself away in a little crevice.

She starts laying her eggs.

But the difficulty she has is that raising the new brood is so intensive that she hasn't got time to go out and forage.

My God.

Now you've just explained how they cooperate and have a caring side, but you're telling me their love lives are a bit murky.

Well, I think we shouldn't shame and judge here, really.

I don't think we should shame.

You've got to keep an open mind.

He's open-minded.

Yeah, absolutely.

But there are certain idiosyncrasies, shall we say, of spider mating that some people may find a little surprising.

So we heard about the female nursery web spiders, but what do the males get up to then when it comes to romance?