What Are Some Different Ways Animals Court?

Snails that jab each other with love darts, fish that hum to their partners and mites that paint with silk are to be revealed as some of the strangest courtship techniques in the natural world in a new exhibition.

Humans might say it with cards and flowers but animals express their desire by humming, painting with silk and even jabbing each other with love darts.
A new exhibition at The Natural History Museum in London reveals the extraordinary lengths that animals in the natural world go to to attract a partner.
"Any sense that an animal has can be exploited for seduction," explained Tate Greenhalgh, curator of the Sexual Nature exhibition, which will reveal the intimate secrets of animals and plants. "We are hoping to show the huge variety of ways that animals have evolved to reproduce.

Giving Gifts

It is not just humans who give gifts. Researchers monitoring Amazonian river dolphins noticed that male dolphins presented bouquets of water weed to females as part of their courtship behaviour.
Male dance flies, a predatory family of insects, present females with gifts of prey wrapped up in silk in a bid to entice them to mate.
Sometimes the males even create silken balls or balloons with nothing inside to present to their chosen female.
The way to a female adelie penguin's heart, however, is gifts of pebbles, which they then use to build the nests where they will lay their eggs.
For couples who have been together for sometime, however, it is best to look at Great crested grebes which exchange gifts of food throughout their lifelong relationships to test their partner's commitment.

Serenading

Many woodland birds have adapted to use song instead of bright visual colours to attract mates in environments where it is difficult to see more than a few metres in all directions.
Researchers have discovered that male haddock serenade females by humming to them.
Dr Tony Hawkins, from Aberdeen University's marine laboratory, found that the wild haddock produce a distinctive "love call" that starts as a series of knocks and eventually speeds up to a melodic hum as they try to arouse the females.
Houseboat residents on the east coast of the US have fallen victim to another fish that likes to sing to its mates – the toadfish.
The humming of these creatures can be so great that it causes the houseboats to reverberate as their humming passes through the water.
A South American bird called a club winged manakin employs a musical instrument rather than its own voice to win a mate. The bird rubs together specially adapted feathers as it vibrates its wings are more than 100 times a second, producing a noise like a violin.

Artistic Talent

Red velvet mites try another ploy often seen in humans – they paint for their partners. The tiny male arachnids lay down intricate trails of silk for the female to follow.
If she likes the artistry of the trail, she will follow it to the end and sit on a deposit of sperm the male has left there.

Heaven Scent

Smell is among the most powerful senses in the animal kingdom and it has the ability to detect subtle chemical signals from far away. Female emperor moths release chemicals called pheromones which the males can detect from several miles away.
The males have highly sensitive, furry antennae which can pick up even tiny amounts of the pheromones and they home in on the source by detecting from which direction it is strongest.
Plants are already exploited by humans to make perfumes and other scents that can make them irresistible, but the plants exploit this technique to their own advantage.
Bee orchids produce a scent similar to a female bee and has evolved to look like a bee in a bid to attract male bees to the flower. The male bees then pick up pollen and transfer it to other bee orchid flowers, pollinating the plants.

And Some Not To Try

While Cupid's arrows are often attributed to causing couples to fall in love, land snails, including the popular roman snail which is eaten as escargot, stab each other with real "love darts" before they copulate.
The dart, which is shaped like hypodermic needle, injects a hormone like substance into the other snail causing their behaviour to change. This substance is also thought to increase the likelihood of fertilisation when the snails finally mate.
Male porcupines also have a rather unpleasant habit. They spray the females with their urine in a bid to attract them. The urine is filled with hormones that cause the females to become sexually attracted.
The male Argentine lake duck has the longest penis of all vertebrates in relation to its body. Some researchers have hypothesised that the birds use it like a kind of lasso to help them snare female ducks who are often resistant to mating.

 Source: Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, "Nature's Strangest Seduction Techniques Revealed", 06 Feb 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8305798/Natures-strangest-seduction-techniques-revealed.html