The Mating Game

Fanfin anglerfish demonstrate one of the strangest mating behaviours in the animal kingdom. In the depths of the ocean, where almost no light reaches, encounters between these usually solitary fish are rare. When they do occur, the male angerflish, which is several orders of magnitude smaller than his mate, bites into her skin, latching onto her permanently - even fusing his blood vessels with hers - and now exists solely to fertilise her eggs until she dies.

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Toad-headed agama males entice potential mates by maintaining burrows among sand dunes in Russia. They face two problems however: first, leaving his burrow to search for a mate risks losing it to a rival male; second, the strong winds on the dunes can blow his burrow away entirely, so he must be fast! One male displays out on the sand by wagging their black-tipped tails high above his head, hoping to be seen by a female in the vicinity. When he returns to his unguarded burrow, he finds a rival male in his place and the circle each other, attempting to intimidate one another by tilting their bodies off the ground so as to appear bigger.

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Albatrosses circumvent the recurring problem of finding a mate by pairing for life. A couple will return to their breeding grounds after spending months apart and renew their bonds with a courtship dance. But some Laysan albatross males abandon their female after mating. These females have adapted remarkably by forming same-sex pairs and sharing the responsibilities of incubating an egg. Another problem arises however, when both females have laid an egg. Each female has an overwhelming drive to incubate her own egg but, since one partner is always out feeding at sea, only one egg can be raised and the chick within the other, neglected, dies. Still, these females are still able to form successful partnership by alternating each breeding season which of their eggs will be incubated, for decades to come.

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