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Call: Antechinus (Antechinus
Where it lives: Australia
What it consumes: Bugs, spiders, centipedes and in some cases frogs and little reptiles
Why it’s amazing: Antechinuses are little marsupials about the size of gerbils with a strange reproductive system: the males make love till they pass away from organ failure.
There are 15 types of Antechinus all with the exact same lethal breeding system. Their breeding season is a crazy duration lasting simply 2 to 3 weeks. Throughout this time, males quit sleep to have as much sex as possible, opting for approximately 14 hours at a time in the hope of handing down their genes. As soon as the reproducing season ends, all the males drop dead.
Males pass away as an outcome of tension and fatigue. Throughout the breeding window, testosterone and the tension hormonal agent cortisol rise in their bodies. The boost in testosterone avoids them from processing the cortisol, triggering organ failure and death.
Some male antechinuses make it through, however this is extremely uncommon. “Males stop making sperm before the mating season and their testes disintegrate, so they are not even using energy on that during the mating period,” Diana Fishera mammal ecologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, stated in a declaration in 2013 “But they can never reproduce again even if they do live.”
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Throughout the breeding season, sperm is saved in the epididymis and is continuously lost in urine, so they have a really short window to mate before infertility and death.
The antechinus mass death occasion offers a chance– fresh food for the pregnant women and any males that handle to make it through the sexfest. Women seize the day to cannibalize their own males.
Related: These female frogs phony their own deaths to leave sex
In locations where various types of Antechinus overlap, women might likewise delight in males from other types. “Each species may benefit from eating dead males of the other,” Andrew Bakeran ecologist at the Queensland University of Technology, stated in a declaration in 2024.
Males from one Antechinus types might eat those from another if the timing of their reproducing seasons permits it. “For the later-breeding species, both sexes may take the opportunity to cannibalize dead males of the earlier-breeding species, to help stack on weight and condition before their own breeding period commences,” Baker stated, including that in one case, a male– possibly in the middle of his own breeding season– was seen feeding upon a “dead comrade” had loss of hair showing stress-induced modifications. “He was perhaps destined soon to become somebody else’s meal,” Baker stated.
Pregnancy in women lasts in between 25 and 35 days, after which the undeveloped young transfer to a pouch on their mom’s abdominal area to grow for another 50 days. When the young are independent at about 3 months, the cycle begins once again, with antechinuses reaching sexual maturity at around 8 months.
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