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  • Male prairie chickens make loud “booming” noises that can be heard miles away and do an elaborate dance to compete for female attention.
  • American burying beetles are monogamous and raise children together. Parents move and bury dead animals up to 200 times their weight to serve as food for their larvae.
  • Male angler fish permanently latch on to females, their brains and organs dissolving until they become just a small lump that releases sperm whenever the female lays eggs.
  • Mussel larvae must attach to fish to grow. Mother mussels wave appendages that look like worms, crayfish or other bait to lure fish and shoot their larvae onto them.
  • Unlike most rodents, prairie voles are monogamous. Special hormone receptors located in their brain’s reward centers give them the sense of pleasure from monogamy.
  • To attract mates, male bowers build elaborate bachelor pads decorated with flowers, leaves, shells or walls painted with chewed berries. The drabber their feathers, the flashier their pads.
  • Male tree crickets use leafs to amplifier their love songs. During mating, the males distract the females by singing and feeding them until fertilization can occur.
  • Lions mate for only 20 seconds at a time, but couple up to 40 times a day for as many as seven days straight, forgetting to hunt or eat.
  • Female day octopi frequently eat their mates. Males, therefore, keep their distance and use one of their arms to place a sperm packet under the female’s body covering.
  • Because little brown bats mate in the autumn—but hibernate over the winter—females store sperm for seven months to delay pregnancy until springtime.
  • Unfortunately, many of these creatures are at risk of disappearing forever because of habitat loss, climate change and other threats. Lend a helping hand today and protect the lands they call home.
Love in the Wild
Top 10 Bizarre Mating Rituals