Wood Frog Mating
"It is almost impossible for one male to pry another off [of a female], and the males stay attached to their prospective mates for hours... A female, even if she is dead, can have a dozen suitors attached to her on various appendages and in various positions. Half a dozen or more males may simultaneously try to lock onto a single live female..." -- Bernd Heinrich, Summer World, p. 33-34
I have been in bars just like that, although usually there were no dead females present: at worst, only semi-comatose ones. But those ones definitely had around a dozen suitors attached to various appendages.
I have been in bars just like that, although usually there were no dead females present: at worst, only semi-comatose ones. But those ones definitely had around a dozen suitors attached to various appendages.
When I was in the Navy I was involved in something called "SeaSwap", whereby the entire crew of the John Paul Jones flew out to Dubai to take over the reins of the USS Higgins, and the crew of the Higgins would fly back to take over the reins of the USS JPJ. Anyhow, when we were on the JPJ we were an all male crew. However, the Higgins was a male and female-fitted ship. So, we arrived in Dubai as an all male crew and got underway as an all male crew. After about a month at sea the Navy decided to start flying in our new female crewmembers. HOLY SHIT was that bad timing.
ReplyDeleteWhat you describe above doesn't hold a candle to what happens when you put 5 females into a floating sea-cage with 350 swinging dicks who haven't seen shore for 5 weeks. I am not lying when I say that I walked onto the mess decks one day and saw what appeared to be a huddle of about 30-40 men, only to find upon closer inspection that at the center were three really frightened girls. I think the other two girls saw what happened and decided to run and hide until we hit port. Once we did hit port and some of the guys got some well-needed relief (if you know what I mean), everybody realized, "whoa, those chicks are butt ugly".
It's funny what a few weeks at sea will do to you. I guess it's a good thing that alcohol isn't allowed aboard American warships.
Interesting that you post about this now, since it recently came to light that studies of a species of penguin had been suppressed for a hundred years because they did some really disgusting stuff (including, as with these frogs, mating with dead bodies) that the scientists didn't want to be associated with in any way.
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