Birds do it, bees do it … And some birds do it really weirdly. Here are some of the more bizarre courting, mating, and breeding rituals of our feathered friends.
Once a female Emperor penguin has laid an egg she transfers it to the male who keeps it warm by tucking it under a fold of skin until it hatches. If the egg touches the ice during the process the chick could freeze and die.
The female then returns to the sea leaving the male without food for two months. When she returns, she finds her mate (and chick) by listening for one particular call over thousands of others.
Bounce your boobies!
The greater sage-grouse is the largest grouse in North America and known for its elaborate courtship ritual. During breeding season, males will gather in leks and preform a ‘strutting dance’ in the early morning.
During the dance the birds will puff out their chests, pop their air sacs, raise their eye combs, and splay their tails for 3 or 4 hours. The popping air sacs, which sound a little like champagne bottles being uncorked, can be heard for several miles around. Sometimes greater sage-grouse will engage in battle, leaping in the air and beating each other with their wings.
The males will spend about a week establishing their territories before the females show up, who will then observe the males for a number of days before picking the most attractive birds. They approach their chosen mates by squatting low on the ground with the wings spread.
Only a couple of males will be chosen to breed and the most dominant male can copulate with up to 80% of the females in the lek.
Once they have mated, the females leave the lek to a suitable nesting habitat up to 10 miles from the lek and the males play no further role in nesting or rearing the chicks.
White-fronted parrots, also known as white-fronted amazons, or spectacled amazon parrots, are the smallest of the amazon parrots and native to Central America and Mexico.
Their breeding season begins in February and generally lasts until June or July although in some regions it can be as late as November.
During courtship white-fronted parrots will start by grooming each other before locking beaks and playing with each other’s tongues, and are one of the few species of animals that engage in mouth-to-mouth kissing.
All very romantic until the male vomits in his mate’s mouth to seal the deal. This type of food sharing between mates is known as allofeeding, but unlike many birds who practise allofeeding to help with the female’s nutrition before egg-laying, the male white-fronted parrot is simply giving his partner a gift.
It can take up to 20 minutes for the male magnificent frigatebird to inflate his red throat sac into a big heart-shaped balloon. During sex, the male bird will put his wings over the female’s eyes to make sure she doesn’t get distracted by other males with better balloons.
Penguins at it again! Dr George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, was so shocked by the depraved acts, including rape, child abuse and necrophilia, he witnessed when observing Adelie penguins that his findings remained hidden for decades.
Levick blamed this “astonishing depravity” on “hooligan males” and recorded observations in Greek so that only an educated gentleman would understand the horrors he had witnessed. Back in Britain he wrote a paper, titled Natural History of the Adélie Penguin. However, the section about the animal’s sexual proclivities was deemed to be so shocking it was removed to preserve decency. Levick later used this material as the basis for a separate short paper, Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, which was privately circulated among a handful of experts.
For most birds the actual act of copulation takes about 2 seconds. The red-billed buffalo weaver not only manages to last up to 30 minutes, but also appears to have an orgasm.
Red-billed buffalo weavers are starling sized birds that breed in Africa. They are one of the few species of birds to have a pseudo-penis, an appendage about 2 cm long that looks a little like a bent finger. It contains no sperm ducts and males fertilise females in the usual way via the cloaca.
During copulation the male grabs onto the female’s back, rocking back and forwards while rubbing his phallus like structure against her cloaca. As he ejaculates his wings shudder and he clenches his feet.
It is not clear why the male bird exhibits this behaviour but one theory is that the prolonged massage is a way of persuading the female to use his sperm rather than another male’s.
