There are not a few animals in nature who strive to show themselves and fight fiercely for courtship, such as peacocks and reindeer wrestling. But the most eager for courtship and mating is the broad-footed bag shrew, which not only has a jaw-dropping mating time, but also puts its life into it.
The broad-footed bag shrew (qú) is one of seven new mammals found in Australia since 1999, named after its pocket-shaped brooding bag. It looks similar to a mouse and is called a wallaby. It breeds in a special way and is characterized by preterm birth, in which premature babies grow up in the mother's sports bag.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 Mating wildly for up to 14 hours! </h1>
During the Australian winter months, june and August, food is scarce, and the broad-footed bag shrew chooses to breed at this time to ensure that the cubs can catch up with the abundant spring.
Interestingly, the males stop producing sperm before the mating season, so they have to work hard to find enough females to mate in order to pass on the legacy. They are also helpless: "We don't produce sperm, we are just sperm porters!" "
It is unclear how the broad-footed bag shrew finds a mate, and zoologists speculate that it may be like most animals, attracting the opposite sex through odor signals and certain information, and there is a fierce "love defense war".
The broad-footed bag shrew is not a romantic master and does not want to waste time pursuing a spouse and falling in love. Instead, they prefer to hit it off and get straight to the point. In short, it cares about how one organ reacts to another, and doesn't care about the attitude of one soul to another soul, scumbag hammer!
When mating, male possums are more wild, more likely to take a prostrate position, and male broad-footed possums will grab the female from behind and use their front paws to grasp the back of their necks to mate with them.
Zoologist Baker said: "Females often lose a tuft of hair around their necks because of this mating style, but they don't mind this rude mating style, they care about being able to mate with other males after this mating." Why? Isn't a one-night stand pat your ass and turn around and say goodbye?
In fact, during the mating period, the mates of male and female broad-footed bag shrews are very confused, and they will try to mate with many lovers. However, in order to increase the chances of a female conceiving, the male will do his best to keep mating with the female for a long time. Scientists have recorded that the mating time of the broad-footed bag shrew can last 10, 12 or even 14 hours, which is very scary data!
In the process of one-on-one mating, its mating behavior is intermittent, that is, the male actually rests. When mating is stopped, the male broad-footed bag shrew guards the female to prevent her from escaping, while also preventing other males from looking at her.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 What does mating bring? </h1>
In addition to allowing male genes to continue and gain pleasure, mating can also have serious consequences.
The whole mating period lasted about two weeks, and the boy of the bag shrew reached the end, although the surface was alive and jumping, but the body was scattered. Testosterone remains at high levels during mating, preventing cortisol production and requiring burning more sugar for energy. The amount of food eaten when the body is full of energy is greatly reduced, and persistently low levels of cortisol will harm the body.
Over time, male possums bleed heavily, their immune systems collapse, they begin to contract parasites and bacteria, and begin to shed their hair. Humans are simply hair loss, and they are "off-the-back", the back from the grassland to a desert, and finally blind in both eyes.
But even if the body is festering and physically and mentally exhausted, the young man still does not stop, the mating passion has increased the horsepower, and only exhaustion can make them stop. In order to mate, do not hesitate to sacrifice your life, it is really "peony flowers die, do ghosts also flow"!
In addition, females who continue to mate face great danger. No more than 50 percent of female shrews survive to the next mating period, Baker said, and even fewer survive the third mating period of their lives.
Therefore, it is best to be moderate in everything and do what you can!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 Why is it crazy? </h1>
Male broad-footed bag shrews do not eat or drink for two or three weeks, and they are bent on mating, and once for 14 hours, which is strong enough to make most animals bow down, but why are they so crazy?
The reason is still in the female, the mating period left by the female to the male is so short that the male can only use the limited time to do more.
But why do females shorten the mating period? Isn't it easier to conceive and reproduce with a long mating period?
This is related to the life pressures of female broad-footed bag shrews, who do not pat their butts and leave after mating like males, and have to raise their children to grow up. As mentioned earlier, the breeding period of the broad-footed bag shrew is in the winter and the spring when they give birth to cubs because they mainly feed on insects, while in the spring, when the plants are overgrown and the insects are bred in large quantities, there are enough insects to supplement nutrition and feed the children. The female broad-footed bag shrew shortens the mating period in order to allow the baby to wean and hunt independently for a sufficient amount of food.
In order to better survive the following spring, the female possum can only compress the mating time. Correspondingly, males also have to race against the clock, casting wide nets and mating like crazy is their strategy. As long as the number of sperm is large and the number of mating with the opposite sex is large, then the reproduction of offspring does not have to worry.
Even if you fight until the last moment, you can consume your own physical strength and life, you can reduce competition and free up your own food resources to the offspring born "everywhere".
Nature has given animals problems, females and males find ways to solve them, and stronger male genes can be passed on in mating wars. Even if fighting to the last moment of life, but ensuring that the population reproduces better, who can say that this is not their wisdom?
Text | Small real