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Penguin Prostitution: The Coldest Profession
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Rating: 3 user(s) have rated this article
Posted by: SexOracle, on 7/3/2009
, in category "Sex in the Animal Kingdom"
Views: this article has been read 303 times
Abstract: The animal kingdom has its very own red light district, and it is situated in Antarctica. Yes, penguin ladies have been spotted prostituting themselves to single males.
The animal kingdom has its very own red light district, and it is situated in Antarctica. Yes, penguin ladies have been spotted prostituting themselves to single males.
Adelie penguins seasonally inhabit mating grounds on Ross Island, near Antarctica. During the mating season, the penguin couples, usually the same couples as last season, set up little piles of rocks in order to keep future eggs high and dry. Single males set up such nests too in the hopes of attracting ladies. Rocks are hot commodities to these aquatic birds, and the low-ranked single males who get pushed to the cold periphery of the flock actually have the best access to new stones.
Getting his rocks off
The illicit encounter goes as follows: A coupled female penguin leaves her hubby to guard the nest, waddles off to a bachelor on the outskirts of the flock, and gives him the glad eye. The male then reciprocates her flirtation by giving her a sidelong glance. He jumps off his pile of stones, and she dives on, face down and bum up. Nothing is left to interpretation. Once she has performed her “trick”, she picks up a nice rock and waddles back home. She may come back for more free rocks later (no extra services included), which a satisfied client will allow her to do.
Some cheeky penguins actually flirt and tease to the point that the male jumps off his nest in the hopes of some booty, then take a rock and run. Any rock-thief is usually chased and beaten, but some females seem to be able to get away with it.
Motivation
The first and most obvious reason that she-penguins sell their bodies like this is for the rocks which are vital to their eggs’ survival. Another motivation, in line with sexual selection theories, is that the affairs provide genetic variety and perhaps superior genes to their offspring. The third reason given by animal behavior scientists is that in an environment where a significant proportion of the males are likely to die before the next mating season, the females are setting the foundations for future relationships in case their current partner dies.
The sexually frustrated single males, of course, like the idea of sparing a rock for some sex. It also allows them to spread their genes with minimal effort. They don’t need to guard any eggs or feed extra mouths, all they need to provide is a little child support in the form of a stone or two.
6- and 8-legged prostitutes
Ladies of the night
Decorated crickets are sneaky little things. The females aren’t easy, and the males’ chances of gettin’ some ass are low. So the males initially attempted to trick the females by attaching a little sac of semen to the female’s body. Given an hour or so, the sperm will absorb into her reproductive system. However, the females could not be fooled. They learnt to take the sac off and eat it. The males then had to out-wit their clever counterparts. They developed the idea of giving a bag of actual food to the female, and then attaching their sperm bag. This strategy seems to work even now, as long as the food is plentiful enough. If not, the sperm will be eaten as seconds. Male decorated crickets are thrifty: in order to provide a big enough meal to distract the female long enough for the sperm to sink in, they collect a large bagful of cheap food low in nutritional value. Talk about tight. Lucky for them, female decorated crickets value quantity over quality. Kind of like seducing a woman with chocolate.
Incy wincy hooker
Male redback spiders in Australia seem to have a similar challenge to that of male decorated crickets: keeping the much larger and hungrier female occupied while the sperm fertilises her. Strangely, the male offers himself up as a meal after he’s inseminated the female by diving into her mouth. Which means these males literally live to shag.
She’s so fly
A hanging-fly female lets the male hump her while she eats the food he brings her. However, she is a high-maintenance lady: no sperm can fertilize her until they have been mating for 5 minutes. This prevents her becoming pregnant to males too stingy to give her a proper meal (that is, one that takes more than 5 minutes to eat). Proper insemination takes 20 minutes, so the male fly really needs to pull his socks up and have a banquet ready that will take more than 20 minutes to eat. If it takes more than 5 but less than 20 minutes for her to finish, his sperm flows but she’ll cut it short and leave to find a wealthier man, meaning Mr. Mediocre probably won’t be a daddy.
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