Quolls: Death By Fornication
If you learn enough about the mating rituals of quolls, you won’t be able to forget the species even if you haven’t heard of them before. During the winter months, all of the females go into heat at the same time, which results in an intense period of reproduction for the species. The males will attempt to mate with as many females as they can, snatching their most recent conquest by the neck and hauling them away to engage in sexual activity. The typical length of a mating session is up to three hours, although it may carry on for a whole day if necessary. This is due to the fact that men only produce a limited number of sperm at once, necessitating them to ejaculate many times in order to guarantee that their genes are successfully passed on. Male quolls are vicious and unrelenting, much like many human men who feel the need to make up for something in their past. In point of fact, many of the females end up being murdered in the course of all of the biting, clawing, and shrieking, only to be consumed by their enraged mate after their deaths.
Many of the men put out so much energy during the mating season that they start balding, lose weight, and pass away within just a few weeks after their sexual rampage. It is almost as if nature is trying to repay the females for the pain and anguish they go through.
Bedbugs: Impaler? I Hardly Know Her
Why go to the trouble of wooing and mating when you can simply stab your opponent and flee away? It would seem that this is the line of reasoning that led to the bedbug’s mode of reproduction. In point of fact, this swift insect does not bother to locate the female’s reproductive organs or engage in sexual activity with her before transferring his sperm to her by stabbing her in the stomach and then fleeing the scene. After that, the sperm make their way into the female’s sperm receptacles through the blood stream, and finally they make their way into the ovaries that are waiting for them.
This terrible kind of mating behaviour is termed as “traumatic insertion,” and it definitely lives up to the moniker given to it. At least when it’s happening to something as awful as bed bugs, it makes it much harder to feel bad for the people who are being bitten by it.
Squid: Those Slippery, No-Good Cephalopods
In spite of the fact that squids may not seem to be the most sexually alluring creatures, it turns out that they may be among the most naughty. The bioluminescent male Dana Octopus Squid uses its beak and sharp claws to bore holes in the body of its partner, and then utilises an appendage that resembles a penis to deposit sperm into the openings. The Greater Hooked Squid, on the other hand, is able to omit the phase of stabbing by using sperm that autonomously dig their way into the female’s skin using an enzyme that destroys tissue. This allows them to avoid the process of stabbing.
Not only do certain males of the Sharpear Enope Squid resemble females in appearance, but they also contain female sex glands. This makes the Sharpear Enope Squid the first-known transsexual squid. Some experts believe that it enables these individuals to approach closer to possible mates without being discovered, despite the fact that the question of what evolutionary advantage this gives is still up for dispute.
Seals: Humping Their Way On to The Endangered Species List
Is there anything more adorable than a young seal pup? There is when it has been crushed to death by a swarm of frisky male seals who wanted to join in on the fun when they heard another pair mating. There is when it has been killed by a horde of male seals. Do you think anything like that happens very often? Think again. It has been shown that this causes the death of two thirds of the cubs in certain colonies. Because of this, the newborns grow at an alarmingly rapid rate; the sooner they put on weight, the sooner they can protect themselves from being suffocated to death.
Obviously, infants aren’t the only vulnerable population here. During the process of copulation, the male Southern Elephant Seal often fractures the skull of the female with his teeth, and when female Monk Seals go into heat, they are sometimes mauled to death by a large number of aggressive males. In point of fact, several endangered seal species are among the few at-risk animals who are given medications that inhibit their libido in order to prevent them from reproducing themselves to extinction via sexual activity.
Seed Beetles: Take A Stab At Quenching Your Thirst
There are over 350,000 different species of beetle, and their strategies for reproduction are quite diverse. When it comes to beetle sex, however, the female Seed Beetle has it the worst of all the beetle species. This is due to the fact that the male has a frighteningly spiky penis, which always causes injury to the female during the act of copulation. The findings of the study led the researchers to the conclusion that bigger spikes in some way aid the men win out in the genetic arms race, and that those with the largest and sharpest spikes also produce the most children.
The question of why the females would ever consent to mate with a partner knowing that they would have to go through such a traumatic event is one that can also be answered by the scientific community. It has been discovered that the ejaculate fluid offers the female beetles a source of much-needed hydration. This is due to the fact that the beetles live in such a dry area. When the female insects are given with an abundance of water, their desire in mating is greatly reduced; but, as soon as the environment becomes arid, they develop an unquenchable need for sexual encounters. At the very least, they are able to take something positive away from the awful event.
Flatworms: Fencing As Foreplay
Hermaphrodite species may seem to have an advantage when it comes to sexual reproduction, but this is not always the case. Hermaphrodites are found in every species of sea slug. When it comes to flatworms, though, competing for the honour of being the father may be a perilous and taxing responsibility. The creatures all have a penis that resembles a dagger, which they use to search for food. However, when it is time to mate, the two flatworms will try to fence each other out of the relationship so that none of them will end up becoming the mother. When one of the competitors is stabbed, it will become the mother, which means that it will have to devote a significant amount of its energy resources to its new brood. The victor, on the other hand, will be able to continue living the life of a bachelor flatworm and will not become the mother.
Slugs and Snails: Playing Cupid Is Less Romantic Than It Sounds
Hermaphrodites such as snails, slugs, and flatworms have to compete with one another during the mating process in order to reproduce. Even if they don’t shake their penises at one other, the mating ritual that they engage in is definitely peculiar.
One thing to note is that the genitalia of the monster are concealed on their necks, just below their eye stalks. They do not have penises, therefore instead of fighting each other with their genitalia, they engage in a game of archery in which they shoot each other with “love darts.” The darts, which are composed of calcium for the most part, do not actually contain sperm; rather, they enable the victim to become more susceptible to the sperm of the shooter, which gives the victim an advantage when it comes to passing on its genes to future generations.
The activity of shooting love darts may be rather risky; some victims have even been known to get shot in the eye and the brain during the procedure; nevertheless, you shouldn’t be concerned about their survival; all they have to do is walk about with a massive dart for a bit.
Of course, throwing darts isn’t the only strange action that these invertebrates engage in when they’re in their bedrooms. The Banana Slug’s penis measures around 6 to 8 inches, which is comparable to the length of its whole body. When two slugs are fertilising one other, the bigger of the two will often find that his penis becomes lodged within the other. That would be problematic in any circumstance, but the impatient partner makes it immensely worse by chewing off the offending member so that they may move on a little bit faster. This makes the problem much worse. Ouch!
Bees: Pop Goes The Penis
You are aware that bees usually die after stinging people, right? It has been discovered that the same thing will happen to the males that mate with the queen. The new queen will have to eliminate all of her sister siblings before she can begin to mate. This will ensure that she is able to rule the hive unopposed for an extended period of time. As soon as that unpleasant task has been completed, the virgin queen will go on a mating flight with a group of perhaps a dozen males. Although the exceptional mating guys, who were chosen from among the tens of thousands of other male bees in the colony, may first believe that they are fortunate, their good fortune is about to run out. This is because their penises burst within the queen, causing them to die. Sometimes the explosion may even be heard. After that, she is injected with all of the sperm that she will need for the remainder of her life, which requires her to produce up to fifteen hundred eggs each day for a period of three complete years.
Wasp Spiders: Breaking Off A Piece of That…Literally
You are surely aware that black widow spiders often consume their partners after mating, however it turns out that this is not even close to being the most aggressive form of spider mating. Wasp spider males let their genitalia disintegrate within their partners right before the female wasp spider strikes and consumes the male. Researchers were under the impression for a considerable amount of time that this was an effort on their part to evade certain death. But as it turns out, removing their reproductive organs had no effect on whether or not the creature survived. However, it did decrease the likelihood that the female’s following partners would be able to pass on their DNA to their offspring. The females that had already lost their genitalia inside them consumed their partners considerably more swiftly, giving the men even less time to try to successfully mate first.
It’s not only wasp spiders that shed their old skin during the mating process; other kinds of spiders do it too. In point of fact, before mating, the Tent Cobweb Weaver would purposefully gnaw off one of his genital organs in order to speed up the process of passing on his genes to his spouse. This allows him to successfully impregnate his mate before other spider species have the opportunity to do so.
Octopuses: Watch Which Hand You Shake
Just keep in mind that the next time you see a tentacle on an octopus, you may really be gazing at one of its arms or even at its penis. Even while the sex organ tentacle is not technically a penis, in many different species it does in fact fill with blood and grow erect as a human penis does. It doesn’t matter what species you’re talking about, though; the fundamental procedure is always the same: the male attaches a packet of sperm to his sex arm, and then uses that arm to insert the sperm into a reproduction canal in the female’s body. This procedure takes place in the same way every time. In every species, the reproductive organ of the male is permanently affixed to the body of the female. It is impossible for him to regenerate his sex tentacle, and he will pass away in a few short months.
However, the process may take on some quite strange forms in some animals. In the case of the Paper Nautilus, for instance, the male would detach his penis tentacle and let it to swim independently toward the female. The Blanket Octopus is known to engage in a discrete mating behaviour as well. The male, which is roughly 40,000 times smaller than the female, will swim up to the female of his choosing, attach his mating arm to her body someplace, and then swim away to die. This is the only way for the male to reproduce. The female seldom even notices the interaction, even as the arm that was left behind will crawl its way around her body until it reaches in her gill slit where it will wait until her eggs are developed. This process takes place even though the female rarely even recognises the encounter. She will then withdraw the arm, tear up the sperm package, and sprinkle it over her eggs at that moment. It would not be surprising if she sweetened her iced tea with some sugar. Meanwhile, at that moment, it is almost inevitable that her partner will have passed away.
Praying Mantis: Post-Coitus Snack Anyone?
It is a well-known fact that during sexual activity, female praying mantises consume the heads of their male partners. However, recent research has shown that this is not always the case. Because it encourages the male to ejaculate more rapidly, head-eating is an essential component of the encounter in some species. Cannibalism is a somewhat unusual activity that happens anywhere from 5-31% of the time, however in most circumstances it is a rather uncommon occurrence. In these circumstances, the female will only consume the male because she is desperate for food and need more nutrition in order to continue surviving. Keep in mind that the main reason most creatures marry is to ensure the continuation of their species, and the fact that a dead female won’t aid the mantis species won’t change the fact that mating is necessary. When cannibalism does not take place during the mating ritual, it is really rather romantic, consisting of a lengthy mating dance and the gentle caressing of the antennae. Who would have guessed that these men had such a sensitive side?
