The animal world is colorful, there is loyal love, there is no complaint and regret full of loving affection, of course, there are also "playboys" who play love as a child, and "amorous wives" who are red apricots out of the wall... What is all this for?
Polygamous trumpet bird
In Peru's Manu National Park is inhabited by a tropical bird, the trumpet bird, the trumpet bird family structure is very interesting, is a polygamous family structure, consisting of a dominant male and female and several unrelated subordinate male and female birds, all of which can only mate with the only female in the dominant position of the family, and not with other females. After the female hatches, the male is responsible for feeding the chicks and protecting them from predators.
Monogamy is the family model of most birds (although betrayals often occur between husband and wife), what prompted trumpet birds to evolve into polygamy?
The food source of the trumpet bird is mainly from the pulp of the fallen fruit, in order to ensure the food supply, each trumpet bird family will occupy enough territory for them to eat for a year, and the territory they occupy can generally reach 1 square kilometer. At first glance, the trumpet bird occupies a large enough territory, however, during the dry season the fruit production in its territory is just enough to maintain the survival needs of their family; If their territory were to be divided into several smaller pieces, there would not be enough food to sustain a family. Faced with this reality, the dominant male and female head birds will never tolerate other birds to marry. Once a subordinate female is found to be trying to mate and give birth in the head bird's territory, they will be attacked and chased.
The chick can remain in its parents' territory when it grows up, but it can only patiently wait for a new fertility position to emerge. Trumpet birds generally do not adopt this practice, and once the young birds have entered sexual maturity (usually around two years old), they will run away from home. Trumpet birds that leave their homes to find space for future fertility are more likely to succeed than birds that stay at home and wait for fertility gaps to emerge. Females who run away from home generally go through a long and arduous life journey. When they try to join a new family organization, the male and female head birds will keep chasing them.
The female often moves from one territory to another, constantly entering and being driven out, but eventually finds a family that does not have a female attribute, thus gaining access and becoming a member of the family. Even if successful, new entrants may be bullied by other adult birds in the family in the coming years. These opportunities for good luck from the females often come very slowly, but those who persevere will eventually be rewarded. If the female leader of the family dies (often by predators such as snakes), it can take its place and become the new female leader of the family.
Trumpet bird
Möngke who is willing to be a little nanny
The Kalahari Desert, a botswana government-designated wildlife sanctuary, has an unusually dry climate, a large temperature difference between day and night, and a daytime temperature of more than 38 degrees Celsius, but in this harsh desert area there is a cat-like animal that zoologists call it the South African mongoose, commonly known as Montgot.
The Mungo family is a cooperative family structure. In a larger Montgo family, up to 40 members can be found. Mungo had a clear division of labor, and when they went out to forage, they often took turns to stand guard to avoid predator attacks. The lesser Möngke, who was in a subordinate position, was responsible for looking after the family. Mungo did not run away from home immediately when he grew up. Organize your own family and remain in the family to help parents and other partners look after and feed their cubs. Although they also have fertility, they do not have children of their own. This seemed a little unreasonable, and the scientists were so puzzled that they followed a Mungo named Juma.
Juma is a young male, Mungo, who is in a subordinate position, and she is responsible for caring for 8 cubs, including its younger siblings and the children of other members who are not related to it. During a dry season, due to a lack of food, the male and female leaders of Juma's family led the other members to venture far away to forage, only to be eaten by predators when no one was on duty. Only Juma and his three sisters were left in the family, and Juma still took care of her sisters as dutifully as usual. One day, a male, unrelated to them, Mungo, broke into their home, and Juma ran away from home in a knowing way, and before long, he found a partner of the opposite sex to form his own family and gave birth to his own children.
Biologists believe that individuals who do not have children themselves can carry on their family's genes by helping their relatives raise their children. However, the common interest of improving the survival rate of the family is clearly not the only factor that motivates the young Mungo to remain in the family, since some are related to each other by blood and some are not, but all family members are willing to help raise the children of other members, whether related by blood or not.
Through observations of Juma's family, scientists finally found the answer. The answer is simple: they are interdependent. Because all members benefit from living in a larger family, all members are impaired by the shrinking size of the family. First, for a Mungo, it can only devote a maximum of one or two hours a day to duty, and a smaller family does not have enough members on duty all day, so they live part of the time without a guard, which increases their risk of encountering predators. Second, the larger the family structure, the more members who help raise the children, and the faster and more robust the cubs will grow, the greater the probability of their survival. Again, larger family organizations are more likely to repel their peers trying to occupy their territory.
South African mongoose
Stolen queen
Ants are one of the most representative social animals. Ant families are centered on queens. In general, after mating, the queen will build a single-chamber nest in the nest, and then produce the first nest of worker ants in it, and the first nest of worker ants will use the food stored on the queen as rations. When the worker ants grow up, they begin to go out to search for insects and various plant seeds as food to feed the next nest of young ants, and so on, the ant family reproduces from generation to generation, and an ant family can generally survive for 10-20 years until the queen dies. Once the queen dies, the family disintegrates.
Recently, scientists have discovered a very peculiar phenomenon that some ant families will go elsewhere after the queen dies to steal an ant and continue to maintain the family's survival, although the queen is not related to the worker ant. This puzzled scientists, which seemed to violate the laws of survival and evolution of species. However, in later observations, scientists found that the worker ants not only stole the queen, but sometimes also stole the young ants, which mainly occurred in the newly formed ant families, which may be caused by the insufficient number of young ants produced by the queen. Ant families that have lost their young ants generally do not sit idly by, they often go to snatch their children back, so the two sides rush to grab until one side wins a complete victory. At this time, the losing party will move out of the nest to move to the winning party to live, and form a group with the winning party, leaving its queen alone in the hollow.
Asian Weaver Ant Queen
Secretly marry the fox of the second room
The red fox is a canine that is very dedicated to love, but scientists have found that male red foxes sometimes secretly marry second houses. This betrayal often occurs in red fox families that inhabit well-fed suburban areas, especially those living in garbage dumps. Because the food in the garbage dump is relatively abundant, this creates conditions for the male red fox to secretly marry the second house.
Male foxes generally build their second home farther away from the first lady. After the female fox gives birth, because it has to take care of the cubs, it is unable to go out to forage, then the male fox has to take on the responsibility of providing food for the female fox, it will run around to find food for the female fox, if its two wives have children at the same time, it will provide food for two families. However, the male fox will strictly adhere to the first position law, that is, it will give the first piece of food it finds to its first lady first, and then go to find food and give the second piece of food to its second lady. It is often too busy to be dizzy and lose sight of the other. If there is a shortage of food, it will have to pay the price for its own deviance, and after meeting the food needs of the two ladies, there is often not much food left for itself, and the male fox often has to endure hunger to find food, and some male foxes die of hunger and fatigue in the process of searching for food.
Red Fox
The treacherous Second Lady
In the lakes of central and eastern Africa is inhabited by a migratory bird, the Great Reed Bird, so named because they often nest in the reeds to breed offspring. There is often more than one female in the male's territory. If the male has multiple mates, according to the first position law, the chicks hatched by the first lady will receive more fatherly help from the male — more insects. So the first lady's life would be better unless the eggs she laid were snatched by other predators or suffered other disasters. If this happens, the male will turn his attention to other females in his territory.
Swedish biologists have discovered a peculiar phenomenon through the study of this bird: the eggs of the first lady are more likely to be destroyed than the eggs of the second lady. To find out why, the scientists did a clever experiment. They placed some clay eggs in the reed bird's artificial nest, and after a few days they compared the marks left by the clay egg's appearance to those of the reed birds and mammals. Judging from the obvious bite marks left by the appearance of the fake egg, the researchers deduced that the first lady's eggs of the male bird were all damaged, but not by wandering mice or snakes, but by the second lady in the same area. The consequences of this behavior of second ladies have the potential to cause their children to receive more paternal care from males and thus increase their survival rates.
Dad's "Nursery Bag"
In the sea world, Papa Seahorse has a more intimate relationship with future offspring. Papa Hippocampus's abdomen really has a placenta-like tissue (though not fully developed). Generally speaking, when the female hippocampus places the egg into the special bag-like tissue located in the male hippocampus's abdomen, a new life begins to conceive. Through the placental tissue, papa hippocampus feeds new life, transports oxygen to its development and removes waste, allowing several hippocampal pups to safely burrow in this internally structured beehive-like belly pouch.
Papa Seahorse's "nursery bag" can hold about 2,000 offspring at a time, and the time of conception varies from 10 to 25 days depending on the species. Whenever a male seahorse and a female seahorse begin to dance at dawn, the work of breeding offspring begins. They first wrap their tails together and travel together for about 8 hours until the female seahorse lays the eggs into the male seahorse's "nursery bag", and the whole mating process is very graceful.
Scientists believe that the purpose of the male and female seahors dancing together may be to coordinate each other's pace and cultivate tacit understanding, so that the male seahorse can put them all in the bag when the female seahorse is willing to line up 9. During the incubation of the fertilized eggs, the hippocampus father has been carefully caring for the baby hippocamp in the abdomen, and he even has to adjust the salt content of the water in the abdominal pocket from time to time to ensure that the little seahorse can adapt to future marine life as soon as possible after going out. When everything was ready, Papa Seahorse began to contract his abdominal muscles and release the fry from the "nursery bag". Since then, Father Seahorse has stopped asking about the life and death of the little fry. Large numbers of small fry are either preyed or swept away by ocean currents, and fewer than 5 out of every 1,000 fry survive and thrive. Relatively speaking, the survival rate of seahorses from eggs to fry development is quite high, mainly due to the careful care of seahorse fathers. Other fish are often abandoned at the fertilized egg stage.
Papa Seahorse's unique ability ensures that the fish is widely distributed in the vast seas of tropical and temperate regions. According to statistics, there are 32 species of hippocampus scattered around the world. They vary in size, ranging from less than 1 cm long to 30 cm long, but all have barb-like tails (which facilitate hanging their bodies on seabed plants) and straw-like mouths (which can reach into tiny crustaceans for food), and their skeletons grow outside the skin (with protective functions).
Scientists don't yet know how the hippocampus gained this privilege during evolution, but speculate that doing so effectively shortens the cycle of having offspring: While the male seahorse feeds the offspring, the female hippocampus can free up energy to prepare more eggs. Once the male seahorse releases all the fry, they are able to begin the conception of new life immediately. In fact, some hippocampus can indeed conceive again in the evening of the same day after giving birth in the morning.
Big belly seahorse
In Australia lives a species of bag frog (which has a bag-like tissue on its hips). Usually after the female frog lays more than 20 white eggs, even if her reproductive task is completed, she can leave as she pleases and do whatever she wants, including finding another new love, continuing to mate and lay eggs, and so on. The male frogs watch over the fertilized eggs during this time until they hatch into small tadpoles. After hatching, the male will sit in the center of a group of small tadpoles to facilitate the tadpoles to enter the "nursery bag" along the gap in the back of the "father". After entering the bag, the baby tadpole mainly relies on the yolk residue at the time of hatching to provide nutrients, and in the following weeks it transforms into an adult frog, eventually jumping out of the male frog's back pocket. Although there are several frogs that have the characteristic of using "nursery bags" to protect the continued development of their pups, bag frogs are the only frogs known to have males perform the task of tending.
There are pocket frogs
Patron saint of children
Echinococcus are carnivorous river fish that like to eat the eggs of other spiny fish, so protecting the fertilized eggs from being eaten by other spiny fish becomes the primary duty of males. The male can secrete a glue from the body, which binds various weeds, branches of aquatic plants and plant fragments together to make a solid nest in a small pit that has been dug in advance. After the "delivery room" is completed, the male leads the female to its nest. The female abandons the nest after spawning, while the male is responsible for hatching the eggs. It lays the eggs flat on the bottom of the nest, then on top of the second and third layers... Until the eggs are laid to a height of seven floors.
To accomplish this, it takes the males 3 to 4 days. Next, it must puff up its cheeks and desperately spray water into the nest so that the hatched eggs can get enough oxygen supply. Then it examines the eggs over and over again, picking out the eggs that have died and stink and eaten them. After the fry are born, it also takes on the responsibility of protecting them, swallowing the little "naughty ghosts" who run outside the nest into their mouths, and then carefully spitting them back into the nest. After a week, when the fry are large enough, the male will leave them and do its job.
Blue-spotted spiny fish
Fighting fish are also a type of fish that males build their nests. However, they do not use plants as building materials, but use an inexhaustible special material, using bubbles processed from the fish mouth as nesting materials. The male puts a fish egg in each bubble and distributes the bubbles evenly, all through its mouth. If any eggs are unfortunate enough to sink to the bottom of the water, the males will dutifully salvage them and put them back into the suspended bubbles in the water. Throughout the incubation period, the males meticulously and constantly adjust the position of the bubbles so that they are evenly distributed. After the small fish hatches, the male fighting fish must not only guard against injuries and attacks from other fish, but also prevent the spawning female from swallowing her own children.
Colorful fighting fish
Parents who switch roles
If it is relatively common in the world of fish to be carefully cared for by fish fathers, it is very rare to have males incubated in the world of birds, and it is no wonder that the lifestyle of the monarch penguin is seen as different. The community division of monarch penguins is as follows: the male is responsible for caring for and incubating the eggs, and the female is responsible for foraging for food.
In the bitter cold of the Antarctic continent, male monarch penguins spend more than two months incubating their eggs. A flock of male penguins tends to curl up in a ball to reduce the loss of heat and energy. Thankfully, male penguins are generally fully "prepared" before hatching. In order to reserve fat, a male penguin weighs even 40 kilograms. After two months of sitting incubation, it may lose half its weight. Therefore, many scientists believe that the male monarch penguin is not only beautiful in appearance, the top diving master in the bird world (can dive to a depth of 500 meters), but also a good father with a strong sense of responsibility and sacrifice.
Emperor Penguins
Among the various mammals, the American monkey living in South America may be the most dedicated father. Monkey mothers generally give up a few weeks after giving birth, but the monkey fathers work tirelessly to take care of the cubs. They usually walk around with the help of their siblings, feeding and keeping their bodies clean, and some even act as midwives when the female monkeys give birth, helping to take care of the newborn cubs.
The reason why American male monkeys are so actively involved may be because female monkeys produce too hard. Female monkeys usually give birth to two sons in one litter, and the weight of these two cubs is almost more than 25% of the mother's own body weight. This is equivalent to a woman weighing about 55 kilograms giving birth to a super baby weighing 14 kilograms, and the degree of hard work can be imagined. The main reason is that female monkeys usually become pregnant again two weeks after giving birth. This is extremely rare in other species of monkeys.
A closer look at American monkeys found that the traits of male monkeys involved in raising offspring may be related to the amount of certain male hormones in the body. Experts focused on a quantitative analysis of a male hormone in the male monkey's urine, and found that once the male monkey's partner became pregnant, the male hormone in his body would be halved accordingly. It can be seen that the behavior of male monkeys in caring for their young is likely to be directly affected by this hormone. This seems to have found its answer in birds as well.
The Sandpiper bird is one of the few birds among birds with sexually reversed roles. In general, females are more aggressive and aggressive, and females are more active than males in courtship, while males take on the work of caring for their children and families. Hormonal studies of sandpipers have shown that males have much higher catalytic hormones than females, especially after the females have laid their eggs. The female will fly away immediately after laying the eggs, while the male will take on the full hatching work, sitting on the egg for 21 days to allow the bird to break out of its shell, and then spending another 21 days feeding and caring for the chicks. If the eggs are laid in the last season, the female may also come back to provide some help to the male, but if another "Prince Charming" appears at this time, it will immediately follow. Therefore, the male sandpiper bird has become a veritable bird "mother".
Sandpiper