Ya?l: My cousin is always falling for these obnoxious, awful men who are just like her father. You'd think she'd learn not to make the same mistake her mother made.

Don: Well, you know what they say. A woman will marry the man who reminds her of her father, and a man will marry a woman who reminds him of his mother.

Y: Yeah, yeah. I just think that's so silly. Humans must be the silliest animals on the planet.

D: Actually, we're hardly the only animals to choose mates based on our early social interactions. In fact, though worlds away from us as a species, some female wolf spiders also make their mating choices on the basis of familiarity. Male wolf spiders run the gamut in physical appearance. They can vary in color and in hairiness. What's interesting is that there isn't a general preferred look among females, but instead, females prefer males who look like males they encountered when they were young and sexually immature. In fact, some female wolf spiders prefer familiarity to the extent that they will often eat a male suitor that doesn't fit that profile. The wider her range of familiarity with different looking males, the more discriminating a female is, and thus more likely to devour a male who looks unfamiliar. The influence social experience has on the female wolf spider's mating choice is almost unheard of among invertebrates. This spider challenges what we thought we knew about arachnids and invertebrates.

Y: I guess it also challenges my theory that humans are the silliest animals on the planet. If we are silly, we're not alone.