Unusual Mating Habits of Animals

blospz

blospz

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Although I'm a couple days behind, I thought it would be interesting for us to post random facts about unusual mating habits among animals. It seems zoos like to have events talking about this around this time.

Here is one I just learned the other day. Male tigers, as well as other felines, have backward facing spines on their penis. This scraping occurs when he withdraws from her. It stimuates ovulation for the female and scraps any remains from another male. Talk about a painful experience!
 
Are you including non-mammalian species such as fish? Fish have a number of weird gender reversals.

Back when I used to work at a small aquarium, we kept a small species called the Grunt Sculpin. Grunt Sculpin females chase males into an area suitable for laying eggs and then "rape" them, after which the males guard the eggs. My biologist friends have speculated that the males try to escape to ensure that they only mate with fit females; a reversal of the normal gender role.

Pipefish males (a relative of seahorses) can abort the babies of ugly females they've mated with. I'm not sure if seahorses can. (As a side note I always felt bad when collectors dropped off pregnant pipefish for the aquarium because after they gave birth the poor babies would be sucked into the filtration system.)
 
Ah. It seems that you might enjoy Isabella Rosselini's series, 'Green *****':
Sundance Channel | GREEN ***** | Videos
There are other videos in the award-winning series on youtube.

There was a fascinating exhibition at London's Natural History Museum in 2011(?) called 'Sexual Nature'. Features included the green ***** films as well as a number of intriguing specimens (including 'Guy' the gorilla), and interesting facts.
 
Barnacles have two penises, each 40 times the length of their own bodies (talk about penis envy!). And as barnacles are hermaphrodites, the neighbour they may be bonking could be bonking them back at the same time.

Peripatus (also called velvet worms; Phylum: Onychophora) have a range of differnt mating habits. Many males produce a spermatophore (a packet of sperm) and carry it around in a dimple on their forehead before inserting it into the females cloaca. The head often contains spikes, hooks and other structures (one is even like a hypodermic) but the use of these structures is not actually known. And some females have a nasty lot of spiky structures around the cloacal opening. In one species the male deposits the spermatophores in a row along the side of the female's body. They attach to the body, but beneath the spermatophores cells gather and dissolve away the skin and the spermatophore wall allowing the genetic material to enter the body where it travels around until it comes in contact with and fertilises the eggs. Females of this species mate once only (not surprisingly), but the unused sperm can be stored for use at a later date.

And the echidna penis has four heads. Nobody knows why.

:p

Hix
 
Hix said:
And the echidna penis has four heads. Nobody knows why.
Click to expand...

Don't they have penises that are quite large for their body? I think I remember showing me a youtube video once of it and I haven't looked at them the same since!
 
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