Some flaunt their feathered plumage, some emit scents, some kill their lovers, and some enjoy a variety of sex positions.

The vast majority of them can animal kingdom mate for the purpose of reproducing their species, but their amorous behavior is rich, strange, and unexpected.

Sex to death

Quoll, a Hellenistic dasyuros carnivorous marsupial endemic to Australia and Papua New Guinea, is a mystery to science. Males die after one breeding season – and no one knows why.

However, a recent scientific article suggests a possible explanation: male Quolls are so obsessed with sex that they die of starvation.

The tadpole, however, is not the only creature in the animal kingdom that dies after breeding, as this is a reproductive strategy (uniformity) that occurs in many animals such as salmon and horse mackerel.

In an attempt to understand their courtship behavior, the scientists installed tracking devices on wagtails, released them during the mating season, and captured them 42 days later to obtain the devices.

The researchers noticed something that surprised them: men moved much more than women and rested only 7% of the time compared to 24% of women.

“Essentially, they are trying to travel long distances to find more females, and they do it at the expense of their rest,” explains Joshua Gask, lead author of the study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

His submission to his sexual frenzy is thought to be a possible explanation for his early death, at a time when females live for more than four mating seasons.

affection

The creatures of the ocean abyss, where there is not a trace of light, have evolved impressively over the millennia, creating impressive ways of surviving and reproducing.

In the case of the so-called anglerfish, a crested fish, the male is nothing more than “a little pouch full of sperm, hormonally responsive to the female’s mature ovaries,” notes Ted Pitts, professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Marine Science. “Females hunt and feed. For men, the only goal in life is to find a woman,” he adds.

The male, which in some species is only one-sixth the length of the female, has huge eyes and nostrils to help find a mate. As soon as the male notices the female, he grabs her with claw-like teeth. Sometimes he stays there only until he releases sperm and fertilizes the female, sometimes longer.

“The longer it stays attached, the more likely it is that the tissues of the male and female fuse together,” says Pitts, explaining that these fish may have evolved reproductive mechanisms to survive at such depths where food is scarce.

Aphrodisiac… poisonous slime

The male Neopyrochroa flabellata beetle is attracted to the chemical cantharidin, an oily substance secreted by other beetle species that is poisonous in large doses. “The males eat the stuff like candy,” says Dan Young, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Then they isolate it in their bodies and pass it on to females during mating.”

The male attracts a potential mate by secreting a cantharidin-like substance from a gland on his head, which females can taste.

Somehow, the male approaches his potential mate by secreting cantharidin from a gland on his head, which the females can taste. “The female approaches the male and literally tastes the substance. In essence, she asks him a question: “Can you have sex? Do you have enough cantharidin to satisfy me? And if not, then they don’t mate,” Yang explains.

After tasting a little, the female beetle succumbs even more to love addiction, getting even more cantharidin from the male’s sperm, with which she protects her eggs, making them inedible for predators. It is noted that this toxin is also called Spanish fly and is also used as an aphrodisiac, but in high concentrations it can be fatal to humans.

“Erotic Darts”

For countless species, sex is not a simple two-way act between a man and a woman. On the contrary, 30% of the representatives of the animal world are one way or another hermaphrodites. Joris Cohen, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Amsterdam, studies the reproductive methods of land and freshwater snails, which he describes as “male and female at the same time,” each capable of producing both eggs and sperm.

Producing large cells, like eggs, takes a lot of effort, but when snails take on both roles, things get easier: “When they meet another adult, he can be a potential mating partner,” says Cohen.

When two snails meet, they get down to business. They approach each other and during mating, one of them extends his penis from a duct in his head called the genital duct and enters his partner’s counterpart to transfer sperm, some of which is used for fertilization and the rest goes into the digestive tract. tract of another cochlea. The male snail, in order to encourage his partner not to eat sperm, carries another ace up his sleeve: the “love dart”.

These are tiny spikes made from calcium crystals, like snail shells. During mating, the “male” launches these spikes into his mate, which act on the muscle mass of the recipient snail’s reproductive system, forcing the sperm to do its job without entering the digestive system.

Lizards and parthenogenesis

Sometimes in the animal kingdom, sex is not possible, especially due to the lack of partners, so some animals turn to an unusual but existing method of asexual reproduction.

In fact, in some animals, including many species of lizards, they have evolved in such a way that, due to the lack of males, parthenogenesis is their only reproductive option.

“There are some species that reproduce asexually, but males retain their role, whether it be ovulation induction or fertilization. But these lizards do not need males for anything, ”confirms Sonal Singhal, assistant professor of biology at the University of California.

^{Source: CNN}