Stegodyphus lineatus
The act of reproduction, regarding the female, leads to an increase of digestive enzymes. This allows her to eat more prey and to stock more nutrients. The digestive enzymes then start to digest the inside of the organism itself, except for the heart, guts, and mostly the ovaries. Once the offspring are born, and until the mother dies, the mother regurgitates for two weeks the fluids stocked inside as highly nutritive food for the progeny. Ninety-five per cent of the mother's mass is digested by the offspring. They will grow to three times their original size between their birth and dispersion. During the period when female spiders are caring for their hatched offspring, the mothers do not eat, and their offspring only eat the food that the mother regurgitates along with the mother's body at the end of this time.
Extracellular digestion
Chemical digestion involves hydrolysis reactions that liberate the sub unit molecules—primarily monosaccharides, amino acids and fatty acids—from the food. These products of chemical digestion pass through the epithelial lining of the gut into the blood, in a process known as absorption. Any molecules in the food that are not absorbed cannot be used by the animal. These waste products are excreted, or defecated from the anus.