Animals that choose the wrong mate
A beautiful "female beetle" attracts the attention of all the male beetles around. Although "she" did not show any intention of mating, "her" admirers still pursued "her" fiercely. However, the male beetles' quest is futile, as they are really aimed at a discarded beer bottle in the shade of a tree— the bottle glows with amber gemstone luster like a female beetle, and the curved lines at the bottom are very similar to the gleaming decorative lines on the female beetle shell, which helps the "Beer Bottle Lady" attract the unlucky males.
Beetles are not the only animals that can choose the wrong mate. According to evolution, each individual is choosing the most suitable mate to pass on as many of their genes to their offspring as possible. However, there are many factors that affect animal mate selection, and their complexity is far beyond our imagination. A few years ago, london zoo in the United Kingdom held a conference called "Why Animals Choose the Wrong Mate". At the meeting, some scientists pointed out that studying puzzling animal mate selection examples will help us better understand the animal mate selection concept and discover the "evolutionary dynamics" in it. Sometimes making mistakes teaches animals more than making the right choices.
Strange mate selection sometimes reveals the animal's amazingly cunning strategy. There is a fish called the short-finned mullet,
Usually, males look for the largest female to mate, because the size of the female's body often represents the strength of her fertility. But sometimes, the males who are pairing will be ambushed by other males. To ensure successful mating, some males have evolved a mating trick – they pretend to be interested in a smaller female and even mate with it, while their competitors are likely to be fooled by its behavior and swim over to mate with the female "bait". At this time, the former can sneak to the side of the female he really likes to mate.
A field mouse that lives in the forests of Western Europe, the European brown-backed rat,
Due to the overlapping of territories, the male rats determined their dominance by strength and established a hierarchy within the group. Theoretically, female rats can have many options for males, but they have to face a dilemma, that is, the "suitors" they reject are likely to enter their nests and kill their cubs. To avoid this infanticidal behavior, the breeding strategy adopted by female mice is to mate with as many surrounding males as possible, even if the other's rank is low. Female rats do this because they know that male rats usually don't kill their offspring. Female rats also have an "ultimate weapon" – selectively giving up the offspring of some low-ranking male rats and devoting more of their energy to caring for the offspring of their preferred partners.
Of course, sometimes the wrong choice of mate is indeed a mistake. Take the black lyre chicken, for example.
During the breeding season, the black grouse flocks in large numbers, with strong males fighting to get the opportunity to "show off their courtship" in the center of the cluster, while other males can only retreat to the periphery. Sometimes, though, the "losers" seem to be luckier – they are favored by some young females. These females make this mistake because they're just adults going through their first mating season and don't yet know how much time they should spend looking for the right mater.
The pairing of young black grouse, while not ideal, at least meets the most important criteria for mate selection: the paired companions are of the same species. And some animals overlook even this most basic requirement — that they interbreed with the opposite sex of other species.
Two species mate, and depending on how closely they are related, they may produce hybrid offspring, but these offspring are usually healthier and more capable than those of purely blooded individuals. Therefore, from an evolutionary point of view, mating between different species is not desirable. In nature, if there is a hybrid, it means that something extraordinary is happening.
The American Plains Hoe-footed Frog, which lives in the arid plains of the western United States, survives drought by lying dormant for most of the year, waking up and beginning to mate only after heavy rains.
Female frogs lay their eggs in small ponds formed after heavy rains, and the little tadpoles race against the clock as soon as they are born, growing limbs before the pond dries up to ensure survival. If a female finds herself in a shallow pond that will soon dry up, she may choose an extreme mating method — choosing a Mexican hoe-footed frog as a mate — because the frog's tadpoles grow faster and have more chances of surviving. Although there may be other problems with this hybrid offspring, at least some of them can continue to reproduce.
It should be noted that the primary motivation for mating and reproduction does not always produce excellent offspring. There is a kind of ant,
Females eat the hindwings of their mates during mating and drink their mates' blood to replenish their physical strength. The study found that in cases of starvation, female antes tend not to be too picky about the males they mate with, especially later in the breeding season. They do this because the breeding season is nearing the end of the breeding season and there may be no alternative to the males of the same species, and they can only mate with the remaining males of other species. This form of spouse may explain why there are no particularly pronounced differences between different species of ants.
There are many other reasons why animals are abnormally mate-selective. For example, bonobos will mate frequently,
Bottlenose dolphins engage in same-sex mating, all in order to maintain community ties. Scientists are interested in these "standards."
Research into "exotic" mating forms is still in its infancy, but one thing is clear: in the animal kingdom, there has never been a fixed principle of mate selection, and the choice of mate, and any other decisions are based on the combined influence of many factors. There are no wrong companions in the animal kingdom, only misinterpretations of this pairing.
Going back to the beginning of the article, the male beetle chooses beer bottles to mate. Entomologists believe that the mating principle of male beetles is to mate as widely as possible, so their mate selection criteria must be low, and all orange-brown, shiny things are likely to attract them.