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Stories about: mating


Manakins Cooperate During Mating Displays

Each year before the mating season, birds called wire-tailed manakins gather in groups called leks. These are basically groups of competitors, which fight against each other for the females of the species. But within these groups, some of the males are in fact cooperating, researchers found. In a recent study, they a...

22 June 2011
02:45 GMT

Flowers Know Butterflies' Favorite Colors

All species are genetically programmed to ensure their and their offspring survival, so most genetic mistakes, that will produce catastrophic hybrids are avoided.For animals or for insects, reinforcement – deterrence of hybrid mating, is quite easy to do, and a small difference in scent, plumage or mating ritua...

10 January 2011
03:31 GMT

Flamingos Cheat on Their Natural Color

A new study carried out by Juan Amat, from the Estación Biológica de Doňana in Seville, Spain and colleagues, shows that flamingos add natural color to their feathers during mating season, in order to look their best and attract mates.The researchers observed the Phoenicopterus roseus flamingo in Spain,...

25 October 2010
11:16 GMT

Female Mammals Select Only the Right Partners

Thus far, scientists and naturalists have known that female birds are the most picky living things when it comes to their mates, but have never suspected that the same behavior could be found in mammals as well. But recent investigations into the matter seem to yield very interesting conclusions, in that it actually ...

18 March 2009
10:35 GMT

A Little Bit of Color Turns Barn Swallows into Macho Males

By darkening the breast feathers of male New Jersey barn swallows with a common marker, researchers from the Arizona State University showed that birds with naturally darker feathers attract more females than birds with lighter feather coloring. The experiment further proved that dark feathers can also boost the test...

4 June 2008
06:34 GMT

Orchids Deceive Bees with Irresistible Lures

A new study suggests that orchids exploit male bees for their own purposes by imitating the scent of bee females. This little trick played by orchids relies on the instinctive urge of male bees to mate when detecting the scent of a female insect. As the male falls in the trap set by the orchid, its attempt to procrea...

27 May 2008
07:40 GMT

Urine Treason: Inbred Males Have No Chance

Inbreeding is extremely harmful from a biological point of view. We all carry bad mutations, but they are hampered by another healthy gene variant in the sets made of two genes in our genome. In inbred animals, bad mutations have a huge chance to be transmitted to the offspring in a double set and to manifest. These ...

18 April 2008
14:06 GMT

Unusual Complex Sex in Octopus Species

Octopuses may be the brains of the sea, but not the sea lovers. They really give a new perspective to the phrase "the male is just a tab of the penis." A new study made at the University of California, Berkeley, and published in the journal "Marine Biology," shows that at least one species of octopus inhabiting the s...

2 April 2008
05:12 GMT

Loving Dads Induce Early Menstruation in their Daughters!

There's a strong reason to be a good father, especially in the case of the baboons. Even if baboon fathers have several "wives", they will have more grandchildren if they take care of their children while young. The researchers at Duke and Princeton universities describe this finding on a population of Kenyan ye...

5 February 2008
06:11 GMT

When Mothers Have More Sex, Daughters Are More Fertile

A female should have sex once, fertilize her eggs and that's it. But many researches show that, in the animal kingdom, females have much more sex, even if bouts of mating consume energy that could have been used to produce more offspring. The natural selection should remove such behavior. But a new study publish...

9 January 2008
03:18 GMT

The Curious Triangle of Love

They are separated since the Jurassic era (175 million years ago) by the Atlantic ocean, still the European common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) has been found to display the same love game as a North American lizard, the side blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana). "The triangle of competing strategies may be far more commo...

5 October 2007
06:37 GMT

Urine and Orgasm: Just in Humans?

If you thought that only some human freaks can reach orgasm through urine (a sexual deviation called urolagnia, urophilia or undinism), you'd better find out that our evolutionary relatives are 'better' than us: in capuchin monkeys, this is so for the entire species! These monkeys splash their feet and...

24 September 2007
14:06 GMT

How Can the Rules of Cannibalistic Sex Change?

There are some people who act like crazy in their search for sex. In many spiders, mating is a risky game, as the (usually) much bigger female will kill and eat the male during the mating process. In jumping spiders, sexes are quite similar in size, still the larger partner will eat the smaller. A new research made o...

24 September 2007
14:06 GMT

Males Anticipating Sex Produce Better and More Sperm

We have known ever since the Pavlov experiments that a method of learning is conditioning: when we associate something with food, we start salivating and so on (remember the Pavlov's bell and dog?). But who had thought that conditioning also works for sex? At least for quail males, making them better breeders! M...

6 September 2007
15:56 GMT

Sexism Is Widespread in Nature

Not only human males are "pigs" and "jerks" and not only women are "bitches". A recent research made at University of California-San Diego shows sexism is rampant throughout the natural world, especially amongst vertebrates. "Females living in the wild routinely fall victim to everything from stereotyping to exclusio...

27 July 2007
14:46 GMT

Pheromones, Good Just for Sex Meeting, not Mating

We, humans, are obsessed with pheromones, even if they do not influence much the behavior in our species. But we still dream of a love elixir that would offer us a lot of sex. In other mammals and many insects, this could be the case. Moth pheromones guide males towards the females even on the darkest nights. Pheromo...

21 June 2007
05:07 GMT

Hornier Male Means a Better Male

Ancient ferocious Celtic warriors knew why they put horns on their helmets (it was the Celts, not the Vikings, that adorned their helmets!). Because a bigger horn means you are a better male. This is real, at least in the case of the alpine ibex. A new research found a perfect correlation between horn size of mature ...

8 June 2007
05:56 GMT

Carrots, Longer Life and a Lot of Sex

Have you ever thought about the link between carrots and sexual success?A team at the Universities of Glasgow and Exeter has found that the plant pigments called carotenoids, besides slowing down the aging rhythm of the males and thus prolonging their life, makes them more attractive to females.Carotenoids usually gi...

11 May 2007
18:46 GMT

Sex Trips for Lousy Males

"The Lion King" presented to the public the meerkats, a type of South African mangoose, through the character of Timon. But unlike Timon, real meerkats do not keep company to warthogs and do not live solitary but in social groups, up to 30 individuals, with a complex cooperative behavior and a strict hierarchy. But i...

25 April 2007
06:10 GMT

Later Sex Is Better for Females but Not for Males!

The theory says that the earlier you start sex life, the larger is the number of kids you will have. At least in the animal world. But this concept, one of the biggest assumptions in behavioral ecology, has been proven to have its cracks, as showed by a team from the universities of Bristol and Cape Town. Its researc...

6 April 2007
02:54 GMT

A Bagpipe to Get Sex

Do you know what's the similarity between Rudolf and those kilted Scots?They use a bagpipe to impress the females. A group of European biologists from Berliner Leibniz Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, Ilomantsi Game Research Station in Finland and the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienn...

19 March 2007
08:27 GMT

A Twin Sister Means No Sex for the Brother

Having a twin sister proves to be a huge reproductive disadvantage for males. At least for the saiga antelopes roaming the Eurasian steppe. A three years research found that male twins who have a sister present a lower, sub-optimal birth bodyweight than those with a brother, a trait they will display also at maturity...

19 March 2007
07:45 GMT


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