OK, so yesterday’s mating rituals seemed to go down well. Here’s some more.The grasshopper
When grasshoppers want to mate it’s like karaoke night. Eerily like when humans want to mate, in fact. The male grasshopper will start to sing and if that impresses any passing female, she will join him in a duet until he finds her. The grasshopper has some 400 mating songs to choose from - unlike the human, who only has “My Way”.
The porcupine
The female porcupine only wants to mate once a year, so how does the male harness this rare opportunity? He waddles over, stands on his hind legs and pees all over her. That seems to do the trick. If she’s unimpressed, she will scream and shake off the urine. Then it’s back to the watering hole for the male so that he can drum up sufficient pee to try again.
The bowerbird
The male bowerbird is like a very fussy interior designer. He’ll spend hours getting his love nest ready, decorating it with flowers, feathers, stones, and bits of old rubbish. He will then sit back and wait for the materialistic female bower bird to wander over and marvel at his skill. He'll only leave his post to nip across to the bower next door and steal things and kick stuff around to improve his own chances of success.
The manakin
The male manakin performs a kind of moonwalk to attract the female. But his version of the dance is so revved up it needs to be captured on camera at around 1,000 frames per second, then viewed in slow motion to be fully appreciated. Eat your heart out Michael Jackson.
The Argentine lake duck
I don’t actually know how the male Argentine lake duck attracts his mate. He probably preens his feathers and struts around a bit. What I do know is that it’s all academic because the Argentine lake duck has the world’s longest penis. It’s a corkscrew-shaped monstrosity that measures about 17 inches long. And if that doesn’t impress her, he’s not above using it as a lasso to haul her back to the nest.
1 comment:
Great work.
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