I used to do research in the field, and in addition to going into the forest every day at the crack of dawn to look for monkeys and do artificial selection experiments, I also spent a lot of time in the dark, just under a thick cloth in the office. I hung the cloth from the ceiling and let it hang down like a tent. This time, I watched purely. I wanted to see how beetles lived, everything about them, and no one had studied their behavior before, and I was anxious to see how male beetles used their horns.
The problem is that all the interesting activities take place underground.
My beetles, unlike crabs, fight at their feet, nor are they like pheasants, which fight on floating clumps of aquatic weeds. Once these little guys enter a pencil-sized cave, they disappear into the soil.
At the end of the 19th century, the French naturalist Jean Weng Li. Fabre overcame a similar problem when studying the underground mating behavior of a European dung golden turtle. After finishing dessert, he left a plate with a hole in it and inserted a glass tube filled with soil.
More than 100 years later, glass tubes have evolved into "glass sandwiches". I built an "insect farm" that filled the soil between two transparent plates and replaced the plates with transparent plastic plates, fixed to the top of the insect farm. When the beetles were going to dig tunnels, they had no choice but to dig between the glass panes so that I could peek inside the nest.
Bright lights can interfere with beetles, and there isn't usually much sunlight inside the tunnel, so I had to simulate darkness.
Every day I would spend 4 hours inside, scribbling notes, and squinting in the dim light as pea-sized beetles fought in small tunnels. The lights made the temperature inside the small tent soar, and the smell of fermented feces was even more overwhelming.
But in a glass sandwich, the beetles live happily. They fight, mate and take care of the next generation, and I have to see it all.
It didn't take long for me to immediately determine that the male beetle would fight with its horns. It's not surprising, but it's exciting to see it in person. The fight was a complete mess. The guardians were on guard, fixing themselves with a thorn in their legs inserted into the tunnel earthen wall, and the intruders would push it, squeeze it down hard, and twist each other with their heads and horns.
When two male beetles push their heads against each other, the horns will get stuck together. If the two males are evenly matched, the fight will become more intense, both sides will become more fanatical, and the tunnel will become wider between twisting and flipping.
In the back and forth, they may swap positions, because the opponent will try to squeeze in more inside, which can be said to be a reward for fighting. Sometimes the duel would retreat all the way back to where the female beetle was, crashing directly into it. Sometimes, they move outside the tunnel and tumble to the top floor. In the wildest, fiercest battles, I couldn't tell who was who, but when the melee was over, it was almost always the male beetles with smaller horns leaving.
The first time I saw this scene, I was so excited that I thought the little male wanted to sneak into the main tunnel. However, it just waited, and after a few hours, it still stayed there and did not move, and my whole heart was irritable. That's right, the moment I went to the bathroom, it moved.
When I came back, I found it was all over. The little fellow went back to its original tunnel, but I could tell that it had dug a tunnel from the side and drilled into the main road. So I combined 5 or 6 nests, mixed all the males of all sizes, and sure enough, I finally saw the picture of them sneaking into other people's nests.
After sitting still for several hours, the small male suddenly got busy and dug into the main tunnel, targeting the female. In just a few minutes, it can mate with the female dung turtle and then leave, while the male guarding the entrance above is unaware.
The golden turtle regularly patrols the tunnel and understands why the small male dung golden turtle does not have horns
This species, like many tunnel-type counterparts, will grow a pair of long horns in large males, not even in the middle transition type, they seem to have completely stopped the growth of horns, and the individual matures more like a female.
Males who are small and have no horns are more maneuverable in tunnels than large, horned males, in part because they don't have horns on their heads to get in the way.
They mated with females, perhaps not as often as the longhorn males guarding the entrance, but also took advantage of any opportunity.
With no hope of winning in battle, these little guys switched tracks and switched to Plan B, cheating.
When a few dominant males monopolize reproductive opportunities in the group, it prompts the remaining males to break the rules. If you can't win the competition the normal way, cheat! Sneaky males abound, almost all animal species. The ram of the bighorn sheep will guard its ewe herd on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
The largest and oldest ram has the largest horns, and the dominant ram can control the ewe herd from start to finish. However, up to 40% of lambs are descendants from small rams. These sneaky rams are called "tailers" and they rush into the territory of the big ram and mate quickly with the ewe before they are expelled by the dominant ram.
Male sunfish and salmon also stand guard in front of the sandy fields where the females come to spawn. The female fish will choose a large, attractive male fish that is in the best spawning site and let the male fish sprinkle a large number of sperm on the eggs. Small males don't have a chance to guard the territory or gain favor with the female, so they sneak closer and sprinkle their sperm on the eggs.
The tasseled sandpiper, a transit migratory bird distributed in the tundra of Eurasia, is a large male bird that occupies territory and displays its fluffy black and chestnut feathers during courtship ceremonies, as well as a colorful breeding feather with yellow, brown and white necks, called the "Land Bird". The female bird has always chosen the largest and brightest male bird as a companion. As a result, small male birds deceive the female bird in two ways. One type of male bird will shed its black and maroon feathers and wear a white feather instead.
Known as the satellite bird, the White-feathered Male Bird circles around the edges of the Goji Male Bird's turf to intercept the female bird that comes looking for the Goji Gong bird. The Michiko birds tolerate them, and to some extent, the female birds come here because they are attracted to both the Michi and the satellite males.
The satellite male bird is very conspicuous in its white feathers. But the third type of male bird is integrated into the territory of the royal male bird, it is difficult to find, it is very difficult to detect their existence, and scientists have only discovered their existence after decades of studying fringed sandpipers. These male birds, which look and behave exactly like the female, are called "father birds". They can openly enter the place with the most resources and the best environmental conditions, and pretend to be a female bird in front of the imperial birds.
In a wide variety of species, there are examples of such males imitating females. There is a marine equinopod crustacean called the "rat woman of the sea"—there is really no better word for this animal—guarding the palm-sized sponge cavity, waiting for the female to come to feed and mate. Large males have a pair of terrifying pincer-like claws that are used in fights. The male with the longest claws wins and successfully defends the sponge. But other males also have ways to get into the sponge. The male abandons his weapon and looks exactly like the female. Like the fringed sandpiper, the males who imitate the females and other supeds can safely enter the sponge without being recognized by the Goji males.
The Australian squid's skill in imitating females is very clever. Marine molluscs are sensitive to color. They are the masters of camouflage in the animal kingdom, able to change their body color in a matter of seconds, blending seamlessly with the surrounding background. They spend most of their lives isolated and invisible, and only during the short mating season do hundreds of squids gather, and the males begin to show dazzling body color, from a mature monotonous protective color to a beautiful combination of green, blue, and purple.
Each female squid may have a dozen males at a time, fiercely competitive, while females approach the largest and most colorful males. Once the female is chosen, the pair swims to the periphery of the group, ready to find a place to mate and lay eggs. But then the cunning male will step in. Mollusks have many ways to cope with competition. Sometimes small males will take advantage of the distraction of the dominant male to change their body color and use their gorgeous appearance to please the female.
Sometimes, they disguise themselves as rocks, merge with the ocean floor, and then sneak closer to the pair. Usually the male will imitate the appearance of the female, so that it can swagger and swim over without being interrogated by the dominant male. When this sneaky male swims between the dominant male and female, it will court with a bright and dazzling appearance next to the female. But only the side facing the female is activated, and the side facing the dominant male still maintains the female appearance.