About three weeks ago I was woken by a blood-curdling scream at about 3.30am. The Joburger in me reached for my phone, ready to call the SAPS, because I was certain someone was getting badly hurt just outside our perimeter wall.
This is when the missus threw a pillow at the window in annoyance and hissed, “Bloody cats!” As it turns out, for several nights in a row an amorous feline couple had been getting it on, in the immortal words of Marvin Gaye.
Two mornings later, I'm driving the 13-year-old to school when he asks me if I'd heard someone yelling like they were having their throats slit the previous night. This is when I took the opportunity to regale him with my extensive knowledge of the mating habits of Felis catus, the domestic cat.
The horrible noises he had heard, I told him, were not moans of pleasure, but cries of excruciating pain from the female. The member of the male is barbed, you see. With over a hundred claw-like hooks, each about a millimetre long. Their primary function is that, as the male withdraws, they scrape out the seed of any other male that might have been there previously, thus increasing the probability of that particular male being the father of her next litter.
(I know, I know — the selfish, sadistic misogynist! But if you're a man and someone calls you out on your patriarchal BS, tell them that at least you're not armed with barbed wire.)
This led to a wider discussion about some of the more bizarre mating rituals in the animal kingdom. It's a far more interesting way to pass the time than listening to breakfast radio shows playing the same Justin Bieber song for the 17th time in August alone.
I wonder how many people know that all snails are hermaphrodites. For obvious reasons, the chances of a snail running into another snail in its lifetime are minimal. So, having both parts is a useful feature to avoid meeting another snail after searching for a mating partner all your life and, “Oh, no! Another dude!”
And no, when they meet, they don't flip a coin to decide who gets to be Papa Snail and who gets to be Mama Snail. They take turns impregnating each other, which I think is pretty neat.
What's not cool, though, is how they go about it. They literally stab each other with their respective organs, to inject their seeds. And the proper biological term for their organs is — and I'm not making this up — love darts. Yes. Darts, like the World Darts Championship. Snails clearly practice extreme tough love with their darts. I cannot confirm this but I suspect that as they stab each other with love repeatedly, they're going, “This-hurts-me-more-than-it's-hurting-you!”
The proper biological term for snails' organs is — and I'm not making this up — love darts. Darts, like the World Darts Championship
At this point of our Zoological Mating Rituals symposium, the 13-year-old interrupted me to tell me, “The more we talk, the more I realise that I'm grateful that I was born human.” And then he decided to see my cat and snail mating and raise me a praying mantis.
Did I know, he asked me, what happens to the male praying mantis after a tumble with Mrs Mantis. She bites his head off. And if the poor bastard is unlucky and she's got a headache, she bites the poor sod's head off as he approaches with a silly grin on his face hoping for some action.
And these Cruellas aren't even loyal; they mate with more than one male per mating season. For some of them, the males may account for 60% of their meals during the mating season. I'm sorry, but that's just disgusting gluttony! The good news is that not all males end up as snacks, though. Some escape. And these are the fellows you'll see just standing in one spot inside your house, thanking the Lord for sparing their lives.
Human population dynamics experts have been lying to us for decades. They keep telling us that one of the main reasons that there are now 8-billion of us is because of advances in medical technology. And then they waffle on about natality or birth rates. I think we keep making babies because our mating is so much fun. That's why Pornhub has nearly 50-billion hits a year. If we're not busy doing it, we're watching other people doing it.
Male honeybees aren't so lucky. Things start out on a high note for them. And by “high”, I mean that honeybee mating happens high up in the sky, during flight. Yes, the original Mile High Club. But it goes downhill from then on because the rigours of the occasion ravage their wings and then it's over.
But the animal with the rawest deal is the male giraffe. To avoid approaching a female that's not in the mood and ending up like the decapitated praying mantis, he makes sure. This he does by taking gulps of her urine to check for hormonal balance. Yeuch! When I read this injustice that the male giraffe goes through I felt less guilty about the poor female cats I hear getting barbed every evening.
But also, if I'm reincarnated as a giraffe, I'm buying robes and joining their chapter of the Jesuits.
