On the island of Madagascar, the largest carnivore is the Horse Island Badger. It resembles a mountain lion, but has a dog-like mouth, weighs much less than mountain lions and dogs, and weighs only 5-10 kg as an adult individual, although it is the largest carnivorous animal in the region due to its small number of local predators and larger numbers of smaller heads.
Horse island badgers are good at living in trees, and like primates, they are able to jump in trees, but they are not as agile as monkeys. In fact, their main food is monkeys, and lemurs make up more than 50% of their diets.
As a result of their long lives in trees, they have evolved a unique way of mating: mating on trees, and males are also lined up to mate, not allowed to cut in line.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > Horse Island Badger</h1>
Horse island badgers are solitary creatures and only briefly reunite with the opposite sex during estrus. During estrus, the male and female individuals interact with each other through the glands of the chest and lower body.
The mating process of the Horse Island badger is all on the tree, and they tend to choose very tall trees, which means that if there is an accident during the mating process, both parties may fall off the tree and die.
The researchers found that the Horse Island badger chooses a tree as the mating site every year, and when the estrus period comes, the female Horse Island badger will occupy the upper position of the tree, waiting for the arrival of the male. Sometimes, many males will come to mate, but before mating on the tree, the males will experience a fight between them, and only a few winners are eligible to go up the tree.
Males who climb the trees line up to mate with the females, and the males who line up rarely fight to cut in line, perhaps because the risk of fighting in the trees is too high, and they have already fought a round under the trees.
These males in line are subject to the female's choice, and if the female likes each other, she will mate with it, but if she does not like each other, she will also reject each other, and even throw the male Horse Island steak to the ground. In this way, the females will take turns mating with the males in the trees, except for those they don't like.
When the female Isle of Badger leaves, another female Horse Islander will occupy the tree and continue to repeat the story of mating. So if you travel locally, if you encounter the marriage tree of the Falklands badger, observe them for a while, and you may be able to see the strange mating methods of the Falklands.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > the peculiar body structure of the Horse Island badger</h1>
Like felines, male reproductive organs have barbs made of protein, except that felines use barbs to stimulate females to secrete a special hormone that allows eggs to mature rapidly, while barbs are mainly used to take the sperm of their predecessors out of the body.
The Falklands pursue a polygamous mating strategy, which is carried out because males pay very little to produce offspring, only a little germ cells, so even if they are mated with different females, they have no loss.
Females are because each litter will have 2-4 offspring, because they invest more energy and pay a higher price when giving birth to offspring, so they want to improve the survival rate of their cubs, and one of the ways to improve the survival rate of their cubs is to make the genes of their cubs more diverse. Mating with different males allows their cubs to have genes from different males, which greatly improves their ability to resist risks.
After the birth of the Falklands badgers, the female Falklands cubs will develop into male reproductive organs around 7 months, and will become more and more similar, and even be able to secrete the same secretions as adult males, making people mistakenly think that it is a male Falklands.
After the estrus period, the male characteristics of the female Horse Island badger will gradually fade and begin to become a real female. What about this unique body structure?
Some believe that the Reason why the Falklands want to do this may be because they are too young to compete with other males, and because the Falklands are solitary creatures, they must have a habitat to survive, so they "pretend" to be males to scare off invaders.
When they reach adulthood, their strength also increases, and they are capable of guarding their habitat even if they do not pretend to be males. Coupled with the fact that in adulthood, they will face estrus, at which point maintaining female characteristics is conducive to attracting more males.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > the current situation of the Horse Island badger</h1>
Although the Falklands are the largest carnivores in the region and have a peculiar body structure and appearance, attention is not high, so that it is not as well protected as the jaguar.
Coupled with the high dependence on the environment, and the forests in Madagascar have been extensively deforested by humans, resulting in the continuous loss of their habitat, making them less and less numerous, and are now endangered.
If you don't pay attention to protecting them, maybe you can only see it on film and television materials in the future!