Being too friendly can be costly. When a new alpha male takes over, female capuchin monkeys are more likely to lose their offspring to infanticide if they have an extensive network of social contacts than if they don’t. Image: inottawa
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Treat them mean, keep them keen? For male Pennsylvania grass spiders, the whiff of dead male seems to be exactly what they look for in a mate. They are far more likely to approach a female if she has recently killed and eaten a male. Image: Anita363
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Never write off a rank outsider. A female mammal that carries a “male” chromosome should struggle to reproduce, but not if that animal is an African pygmy mouse. For females of this species, a male chromosome spells reproductive supremacy. Image: Ian N. White
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Male marsupial mice just don’t know when to stop. For Antechinus stuartii, their debut breeding season is so frenetic and stressful that they drop dead at the end of it from exhaustion or disease. It may be the females of the species that are driving this self-destructive behaviour. Image: Tim Collins Tasmania
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The sweet smell of success or the bitter whiff of despair: there’s something in a male...
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Sex has probably been a commodity for even longer than society has existed. The “oldest...
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It is an almost poetic act of nature. Each year, under the same late-spring full moon, hundreds of coral species simultaneously spawn into the water. Now reef biologists have figured out how they might do it. Image: Isthmene
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