Getting ahead in the mating game requires some astonishing behavior –from promiscuous prairie dogs to manakin pick-up artists, kidnapping macaques and hyenas with a bad case of sibling rivalry.
Noteworthy Facts:
- Female Gunnison’s prairie dogs are only receptive to mating for about six hours a year. If they don’t successfully mate during this window, they lose their chance until next year. In order to maximize this time and ensure pregnancy, two-thirds of female prairie dogs take more than one partner.
- In Uganda, Banded mongoose packs are so tight-knit that the females tend to mate with their male relatives, resulting in a high proportion of inbred pups. When males and females from different groups wish to get together, they must incite a riot between the clans as a distraction.
- Spotted hyenas are often born as twins, and shortly after birth the siblings fight to establish a hierarchy in their clan, which can include more than 100 hyenas. If food is in short supply, the dominant pup will push the subordinate pup away from their mother’s milk. In nearly 10 percent of hyena litters in the Serengeti, the subordinate dies of starvation.
Buzzworthy Moments:
- Female burrowing bees wait out the winter underground, and early in the mating season, the waiting males outnumber the females hundreds to one. In an intense sequence, multiple male bees descend on a female as soon as she pops out from the burrow, wrestling their rivals for dominance. This results in a colony littered with dead bees, and occasionally the female becomes an unwitting victim as well.
- Male long-tailed manakins attract a mate by partnering up with another male for a complex dance number. Some duos may dance together for up to 10 years, but only the alpha male gets to score with the female they attract.
- A female praying mantis lures a mate by pulsating her abdomen in order to release pheromones. A successful mating session ends in death for her partner – eating him improves her fertility by up to 40 percent.
