If you can think of it, it probably happens in the animal world. When it comes to the most debauch acts of sexual deviance, exploitation, adultery, self-harm and even cannibalism, nature knows no bounds.
Valentine’s day is certainly nothing to celebrate for Australia’s male marsupial mice. They suffer almost complete mortality after mating and live for less than a year. Young males’ reproductive organs shrivel up giving them one shot at victory (so to speak) and in the effort to make up for a lost time, they can mate for up to 14 hours. In some species, males form nest aggregations of up to forty individuals and females, that usually nest solitarily, will make excursions to visit them. After rampaging sexual efforts, that often lead to prolonged night-time and daylight activity, the male antechinus, exhausted, full of stress hormones and heightened testosterone, begin to leak blood into their body cavities and their organs fail. They die shortly after from horrendous internal haemorrhaging.
WA’s Honey Possum has a more conventional sex life but holds world records when it comes to their style of romantic prowess. For their size, they have the largest testes of any animal on Earth, nearly 5% of their body-weight–each about the mass of the animal’s head. They also have the largest sperm of any mammal on Earth, about one-third of a millimetre, so just visible to the naked eye and about seven times longer than the human equivalent. Being the continent’s only truly nectivorous mammal, the female mates and gives birth up to four times a year when pollen and nectar are most available. Females choose multiple partners which is probably why the males have developed extraordinary adaptations to increase their chance of being the successful mate.
If you’re an East African Naked Mole-rat, you might never get to find love. Fewer than four individuals get to mate with a single queen and the rest succumb to nest maintenance and food-gathering. It’s not all bad news though. Unlike the Australian Antechinus, mole-rats could theoretically live forever. They are hairless, cancer-immune and don’t even seem to suffer pain! Researchers in California who spent most of a lifetime (theirs and the mole-rats) studying a captive colony, found death-rate to be exceptionally low and remain so, throughout the animals’ lives. The scientists amassed detailed information on the history of almost 3,300 mole-rats and discovered that well over half the population lived more than 30 years and during that time, showed no signs of physiological decline. In what seems like a rather unfair twist, breeding animals survive even better. All the evidence so far, points to an animal that might have evolved to cheat death. But what kind of life would it be, to live forever and possibly never find love?
Then there are the insects. The infamous preying mantids and spiders, that consume the male after sex (the story for males of most animal species, does not seem quite as thrilling, now I come to think of it). Some species of damselfly have developed the ability to dress in drag, disguising themselves as females, so they can beat male-coloured competitors by being close-enough to swoop in for a crafty tangle with the opposite sex. This is a ploy that would almost certainly backfire from time to time, when it inevitably results in a case of mistaken-identity with another male.
the marine flatworm self-impregnates and reproduces by surgically injecting its own sperm into its own head.
This might seem rapacious but whether a female damselfy / dragonfly chooses to mate is usually voluntary on her part.
In hanging swamps perched precariously between flat-topped mountains above the Gross Wilderness in the Blue Mountains an hour and a half drive from Sydney, live petal-tail dragonflies. Males are fiercely territorial, jousting on the wing with other males and using keen eyesight to spot passing insect prey and the more widely travelled females. With a clatter of wings and deft aerial manoeuvring, the male secures a female using the petal-like protrusions on his tail, designed to fit lock-and-key behind her eyes. She is larger and stronger so, despite his advances, she’s now trailing behind him in tandem. Perhaps it is his strength she’s measuring. Dragonflies have a wide variety of sexual strategies but females store the sperm from different males throughout the season. If she submits, she arches her body underneath his, assuming a wheel-like position whereby his sexual organs are designed to scoop out rivals’ sperm. Mating seems an Olympic effort. Once it’s over, she heads off immediately to lay eggs, which she’ll do by dipping her abdomen into damp boggy ground. Throughout a season, she’ll lay multiple times with different males. As for him, he will spread his fragile wings just once this season, his only chance to mate before he dies.
In the world of marine fish, the strategies are even more bizarre. In the film Finding Nemo, motherless Nemo becomes separated from his father. In the real world, on returning from his journey of discovery, his father would have become his mother and they would have lived happily ever after. Clownfish and many other reef fish will change sex, to maintain the matriline (this particular plot-line was never likely to make it past Disney’s censors). Not all sexual reproduction, however, is even male and female. There are plenty of extreme alternatives to our binary view of how love works in the animal Kingdom. Take the example of the marine flatworm that takes the concept of self-abuse to its ultimate extreme. It self-impregnates and reproduces by surgically injecting its own sperm into its own head!
Then there are of course, widespread cases of homosexuality in animals, a trait that seems limited to more complex high-order mammals, including humans. While some scholars of dubious intent question the benefit from an evolutionary perspective, it actually makes sense in terms of natural selectionDarwin’s theory how species are formed, where those that stand in closest competition with those undergoing beneficial modification and improvement, will go extinct faster. Natural selection is by survival of the likeliest, not survival of the fittest. The fittest are only likely to survive because they happen to be most suited to the environment into which they are born. The More. In any case, if there are successful species where individuals die horrendously after living for one year, why would we imagine that homosexuality isn’t a normal and beneficial strategy for population survival?
Wild Bighorn Sheep from the Rocky Mountains of North America fiercely contest territory butting heads with enormous horns that can take up a tenth of their body-weight, yet also routinely court each other and in apparent shows of social rank, mount subordinate males. A study of domestic sheep found a variety of sexual preferences within a flock: bisexual, asexual, female-oriented and up to 8% of rams exclusively prefer other rams. Real, socially-driven diversification in sexual strategies within the species, makes sense. In flocking or social animals, a degree of close physical bonding and affection within sexes could easily translate into more cooperation and a better survival outcome–imagine how much easier it is to defend your flock from wolves if you have half a dozen ripped males standing together, to protect each others’ honour in a fight. Need I mention the inherent camaraderie and homoerotic antics that seem to permeate male sport and the military. Same-species love, in social animals, including primates, dolphins and humans, is not uncommon.
One thing is for sure though, however love exists and in whatever form, the reason it happens is because it is in our best interest and compatible with the world around.
There are no greater influences for survival than death and sex. Combine the two and you have what might seem perverted but has given animals the perfect way to maintain balance, to minimise their effect on other life forms around them and be in harmony with the ecosystemHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More that supports them.
Anyway, given we are driving most animals to extinction, who are we to question the way things need to be, to have the greatest chance of survival? Taking pleasure in the diversity of life is one of the greatest thrills we have, and animals are a window into something magical that cannot be explained in full but we can wonder at its glory and do better to protect it.
I will leave you with this one final tidbit to think about on Valentine’s day, when your partner hands you that red rose, lovingly protected from sap-sucking aphids by predatory ladybugs.
The ladybugs exchanged their own love offering as they helped deliver you a healthy rose. After copulation, the female ladybug accepted a nuptial gift from the male – a specially-crafted package of sperm, which she eagerly swallowed before going on her way.
Happy animal valentines day.
