At a time when man is lost today, with all these dating apps, even the ability to flirt, the animal kingdom insists on making love and sex as difficult as it gets.
Out there in the wild, creatures of all kinds have evolved in ways that give us impressive flirting strategies, intercourse and fertilization.
Both the corte and the sexual act itself defy what we know or think we know about how the offspring that will perpetuate the species are produced.
And the Virgin Mary's pony is a station here, as this sexual intercourse can prove deadly. Male ostriches are frantically looking for a mate before catching a cold and experiencing a slow and torturous death.
That's why they do not complain about the second option that opens before them: yes devoured alive and eventually beheaded during mating.
And why do women resort to such cannibalistic practices? Because sex consumes a lot of energy and eating with your partner during intercourse not only fills you with nutrients, but also with more chances to produce fertilized eggs.
And it starts with the head, as it knows that the male can continue his work for a while even without it. All about playback…
For 2-3 weeks in early spring, the forests of Australia resonate with the sexual make-up of the male anthill. The small and tireless purse you indulge in sexual affairs for 14 consecutive hours, trying to have sex with as many females as possible.
Desperate and priceless, the male has sex frantically and self-destructively. To the point that his fur recedes from the skin, his immune system lays down his arms and blood gushes from his genitals.
At the peak of all this, the male is already exhausted and dying, usually from multiorgan failure. "Suicidal reproduction" is what scientists call it, as this is the way the ostrich has chosen to spend its short life, usually before celebrating its first year.
It may sound outrageous, but such raging sex is, however, the endless way to compete with other males in the breeding race and produce as many offspring as possible. A sexual battle up death...
Why waste time flirting and flirting when you can just get the job done and get it on your feet? This is the reproductive philosophy of the bed bug, only it is extremely violent. So violent that the science he calls it "traumatic reproduction", as it is done with. knives.
So when it finds a mate, the bed bug climbs on it (or even on it, sometimes) and pierces its abdomen with its spiky reproductive organ, ejaculating in the open wound. Bypassing the fully functional reproductive pathway, which is used by the female only to extract the eggs.
The sperm will find its way to the ovaries in the labyrinth of its lymph insect, where it will fertilize the eggs. Contact is as traumatic as it sounds and sometimes the female dies from wound infection.
The male usually pierces the female wherever he finds her, abusing her in unspeakable ways. That is why she has developed a defense mechanism, omnipotent genitals and a strong immune system, that is, to get her clean from mating.
A species of flea that lives in the caves of southeastern Brazil, the tiny insect Neotrogla, is known in science for an extreme sex identity change: the female carries organs in her body like penises, through which she penetrates the female reproductive organs of the male duration of mating.
This strange reversal of genitals remains unique in nature. The female is here who transfuses the sperm from the male body and their sexual encounter lasts somewhere between 40-70 hours.
The nutrient-rich sperm of the male plays a double role here, not only fertilizing the female's eggs, but also keeping her full during this long meeting.
In fact, in order to remain attached to the male during mating, the female is anchored inside the male's body with special protrusions around her penises. In fact, this erotic velcro is so effective that any attempt to separate the two lovers in the laboratory always ends in tragedy.
For the male, torn in two…
The well-known monstrous fish of the Abyss with its ugly teeth and eerie shine, with which it attracts its prey, is only the female of the species. Small, weak and without phosphorescent goodies, the male anglerfish has nothing remarkable.
And it's not interesting because in reality this imperfect being is nothing more than a seminal vesicle bag. Born into a world of complete darkness, all he does is smell and try to realize the sole purpose of his existence: to fertilize a female.
And it detects it by its pheromones and the characteristic glow of its kind. In some species, in fact, the male is so immature that he does not even have a functioning digestive system. After all, 99% of these unfortunate suitors starve while remaining virgins.
But the other 1% do not live much better. Once he finds a female, he will hook his mouth to her ribs and begin to decompose. Soon their flesh will become one, the male will merge into the female and his reproductive organs will melt.
There will be only a remnant of a seminal vesicle with gills. Scientists call their union "sexual parasitism", it provides him with food and he provides a constant flow of sperm.
And he is not alone, of course, as many as 6 males are hooked and disassembled each time into a robust female…
It is called the leopard slug (Limax maximus) because of its streaked body, reminiscent of the well-known feline. And despite the fact that he is a slow and lazy creature, he turns out to have a crazy athletic performance when we talk about his bed.
Although they are hermaphroditic, these snails they do not fertilize themselves, but look for partners in order to exchange sperm. Speaking of absolute equality of the two sexes that is. So when they meet and are in mating season, they will hang from a branch and wrap their bodies.
In this suffocating circle, each of them will unfold his iridescent blue penis from the right part of his head. The organs swell and connect to each other and the twist creates something like a pump, a pulsating conduit, for the flow of sperm.
When this bizarre ritual is completed, the snails separate and return to the ground, each laying its own fertilized eggs.
The fact that it eats the tongue of its victim is just one of the grim things that the marine parasite Cymothoa exigua does. Because you see he is not happy just devouring the tongue of his host fish, he has to replace it. By himself!
But first a group of these little demons will pierce the fish from its gills. And they will grow up in it, until they become adults. When they reach the desired size, at least one of them will transform into a female.
If it is one and only in the fish, it will remain male, but as soon as it arrives second, the first will become a female.
And while the very process of his transformation is unthinkable, this young lady will find her way to the tongue of the fish, where he will begin to suck her from the blood.
Η language eventually withers and becomes useless, leaving the mouth empty. And so the parasite takes its place, in fact functioning as a normal language. Not only does it move food into the mouth, but it also cuts large pieces of prey, helping its host to chew.
When it has a break, the parasite feeds, relaxes or fights, often deadly, with the males living in the gills. At some point, hermaphroditic as it is, gives birth to its young and the cycle starts from the beginning, in a new host…
At some point in the long journey of evolution, a section of the reptile family decided that it was tired of the males' hair and their sperm. And so he got rid of them completely.
The lizards Aspidoscelis neomexicanus New Mexico is today one of the species that have exclusively female limbs and can reproduce without the help of the male.
How; These ladies clone at will, laying eggs with at least twice the normal chromosomes, which can grow and develop into embryos without the need for sperm fertilization.
Of course, this does not mean that courtship is lacking, even if it is not needed. Females ride here females and perform the rituals of love, science probably tells us to increase their fertility.
New Mexico lizards represent an impressive evolutionary feat, as it is a species that has emerged from a cross between two species and such hybrids are usually incapable of reproduction.
However, by confusing their parents' genomes, these lizards have acquired a very special DNA that allows them to replicate themselves over and over again.
We usually dance to spend time, but if you are a male peacock spider, then you dance for your own life. Like normal peacocks, these spiders have beautiful and iridescent colors, but they are not enough to impress the female.
The female will be impressed only by the dancing figures of the male. And if not, then he will lose his life. That's why males give it performance of their lives, since it is precisely a matter of life and death.
The male dances and the female will chase him, pushing him every now and then. As long as death lurks constantly as a possibility over his head, the male dances and dances, even for 50 minutes.
She has so much time to find the figures that the female will like. If he finds them, they will mate. If the female remains frustrated, she will kill him…
The squid is one of the creatures that are known to reach mating far in terms of fantasy. And it is not at all difficult to choose a partner, equally. So is the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas), also known as the giant squid.
And the cephalopod is really huge, reaching even two meters long. But also a weight that often exceeds 50 kg. And since it employs bioluminescence, with its body permeated with red and white glows, it is sometimes called "red devil".
"Eros" would of course be a more appropriate name, since the giant squid shoots you see love arrows. Sperm tubes, more correctly, but let it be. In addition, just last year we learned that it is the sixth species of squid engaging in homosexual love.
This is because when we talk about sex, Humboldt chooses quantity over quality. They will meet erotically with males and females, sometimes choosing males in disproportionately large percentages.
Scientists explain that this love strategy remains evolutionarily incomprehensible. Giant squid will mate with everyone, as their bodies produce sperm throughout their lives. At any given time, they have about 300-1.200 semen-carrying tubes armed and ready for battle…
The loudest voice in the bird world comes from a bird that wants to have sex. What more suitable! The male white bellbird (Procnias albus) does not know of discretion when it is time to mate.
She will magically find herself next to a female, take a deep breath and shout as loudly as she can at her face. The sounds it makes are the strongest ever recorded in the winged kingdom, reaching even 115 decibels. It's like sticking your head in a "rock concert speaker", as the researchers brilliantly said.
As they sing these deafening ballads, the males shake their heads furiously, so much so that they usually whip the female with these long fleshy ends under their beaks.
Females, however, do not seem to be bothered. Scientists actually suspect that they like all this erotic chaos. Here too the evolution has reached its peak, as the sound of 115 dB can comfortably deafen the female. If it is to lose her hearing for love, let it be, these winged ladies seem to tell us…