Shock shock horror horror shock shock horror

This is why I kick her in the shin and run as soon as im done

having just filled out my last paternity check, I am getting a kick out of these replies.

Dead for Tax Reasons: Shock shock horror horror shock shock horror

Wow 90's high school flashback

A Wild Snorlax

I read a paper by an entomologist who liked to hang out by ponds and watch tiny flies mate. It has a picture of a pair of midges showing him penetrating her down below while she penetrates him up above.

A female predatory midge grabs a male in midair, sticks her beak into his head, and starts sucking out his brain. His genitalia are programmed to lock into mating position and release sperm when his brain is destroyed. Eventually she sucks him completely dry and discards the corpse, except for the genitalia which remain wedged inside her. This strategy saves a few neurons in the female brain because she doesn't need separate programs for "hunting" and "mating." From his point of view, the presence of his detached penis makes it difficult for the female to cheat on him.

A Wild Snorlax: That's not even the worst of it when it comes to arachnosex. Male golden orb web spiders (nephila fenestrata) abscise their own copulatory organs and leave them in the genital tract of the female to obstruct subsequent mates, and male corn spiders (Argiope aurantia) actually die mid-coitus and the female has to wander around with a dead body plugging up her junk. The arthropod version of the Kama Sutra would make the Goatse-Lemon Party-2 Girls, 1 Cup triumvirate look tame by comparison.

Sexual intercourse in the animal kingdom in general is farked up.

Female sexual cannibalism is pretty common -- a multitude of species eat their mates, including spiders, scorpions, shrimp, crickets, praying mantises and other insects.

The female betta fish is prone to eating her own eggs, so the male frequently chases her away while he cares for them until hatching.

The praying mantis is definitely the most gnarly: The female bites her lover's head off and eats it while they're having sex. Despite this, he is still able to finish - a clear indication that he doesn't need a head to have sex. So, just like human males.

To balance things out, there's plenty of brutal, misogynistic rape to go along with female sexual cannibalism.

The male bedbug has a knife for a penis, and he mates by stabbing the female through the abdomen, cracking her exoskeleton and filling her body cavity with sperm. This sometimes kills her.

Some species of male weevils actively seek out and inseminate other males. Since they don't have eggs, those males often become carriers of multiple strands of sperm. When they finally find a female, both sperms are deposited to battle for the eggs. So it's in a male's best interest to inseminate as many other males as he can to increase the odds of spreading his seed. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And then there's the evolution of the mating plug. A mating plug is a glue-like substance that the male secretes shortly after copulation to seal off the female reproductive tract, thereby securing reproduction rights. It's like pouring concrete in your woman's vagina after having sex with her. Even some monkeys use the mating plug method. It is a better system than simply guarding the female against other would-be suitors because it frees up the male to leave her and inseminate other females, secure in the knowledge that only she can bare his offspring.

Some species of cuckoo drop their eggs in other cuckoos' nests, alleviating the responsibility of raising the chicks themselves. I don't know why, but I find this absolutely hilarious.

Deep sea angler fish live in such desolate environments that it's often difficult for them to find one other. They've found a solution for this: The male is about one-tenth the size of the female and can't live very well without her, so when he finally encounters one he latches onto her underside like a parasitical worm. He fuses to the female's flesh, feeding off her food and blood until eventually all his organs atrophy, including his brain, heart and eyes, leaving only a sperm-producing sex organ to fertilize her eggs. Females can even have multiple males attached to them.

Male cuttlefish often disguise themselves as female cuttlefish to get closer to other females and mate with them. I don't understand how this works, but they're cephalopods, and cephalopods can do anything. Some species of female cichlids carry eggs in their mouths and perform oral sex on the males to fertilize them. The freshwater mangrove rivulus (a tiny fish) is the only vertebrate in the world that is hermaphroditic, and it can self-fertilize so it doesn't need to mate at all. It also has the unusual ability to live in trees for large portions of its life. Don't ask me how it does this.

Snail sex might be the most awesome, though. Being hermaphrodites, they all have their penises located in their heads which they jab into each other like hypodermic needles. Other hermaphroditic species, such as marine flatworms, also engage in this activity, called penis fencing. The loser is the one who gets stabbed first and suffers the deleterious effects of traumatic insemination.

When the whole animal kingdom is taken into account, consensual monogamous courtship is actually pretty rare. Most animals engage in abundant levels of rape, coercion, brutality, infidelity, homosexuality, situational sexual behavior, group sex, masturbation and explicit life-threatening and occasionally fatal sexual perversions - everything from cannibalism and necrophilia to castration and coprophagia and felching and everything in between - with clear conscience. We are the only ones who have socio-sexual rules. The law of the natural world with regards to sex is one of promiscuity and opportunism. Outside of that there are no laws.

/the more you know

Here is a picture of mating Sphaeromias (I think). The female is on top, her beak jabbed into the male's chest.

http://macroclub.ru/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/9581

Ishkur

Male squirrels leave mating plugs, which female squirrels pull out and eat.

StanTheMan: Great writeup, but you didn't mention the next chapter, i.e., "OK, now, how can we lay our fertilized egg into another species in a sick, horrible, macabre way?"

Want to know something really fascinating about that behavior?

When a digger wasp returns to the nest with her prey, like any sensible burrow dweller she first inspects the nest to make sure nothing has occupied it in her absence. So she leaves her paralyzed prize near the entrance while she goes in. After a routine check, she comes out, grabs her quarry and buries it alive for her brood. BUT: If she comes out and notices that her prey has moved, she will drag it back to the original spot and then re-inspect the nest. If she comes out and the prey has moved again, she will drag it back and re-inspect the nest again. And again. And again. Like being stuck in a program loop, she keeps re-inspecting the nest even when she just checked it a few seconds ago. It never occurs to her to just pull the prey straight it.

This specific pattern of behavior is so hard-coded, so autonomic, and so damn funny that the wasp can be held in this state indefinitely, constantly rechecking the nest every time prankster scientists push her prey around with a pencil. She is not able to logically deduce what is happening. This behavior, called genetic fixity, is otherwise known as sphexishness after the digger wasp's scientific name sphex because this is a pretty famous experiment and scientists don't get out much.