In the animal world there is an unwritten rule for survival. Either you sleep or you are dead. Either you rest adequately or you will not be able to survive the hostilities of the environment. Either you recharge your energy or you will become easy prey for predators (or on the contrary, you will not be able to capture your victims). But there are times when this universal rule is sacrificed for the greater good. For example, according to research published in the journal ‘Current Biology’, there is a kind of marsupial that during the time of mating sacrifices half of its hours of sleep to have more and more sex. The scientists who led this study affirm that it is the first direct evidence of “sleep deprivation” as a strategy to increase copulation found so far among terrestrial mammals.
The protagonist of this story is a small Australian marsupial known as the dark antechinus or toothed marsupial mouse. This small rodent, which lives in the forested regions of Australia and Tasmania, is already well known for his sexual behavior. Previous studies had discovered that these little animals are some real ‘sexual kamikazes’ since, when the time comes, they are capable of dedicating between twelve and fourteen hours straight to copulation. Their efforts are so great that, during these periods, they do not even eat. And they collect until they are exhausted and die of exhaustion. The males, in fact, only males, only last one breeding season and die shortly after turning one year old.
The antechinus are true ‘sexual kamizakes’, capable of dedicating between 12 and 14 hours to fornication.
Only three hours of rest
The study published this Thursday adds one more detail to understand the curious sexual behavior of these animals. Thanks to exhaustive monitoring of these animals, a team of researchers has discovered that during mating seasons, male antechinuses are capable of sacrifice more than half of your sleep in order to copulate more. In total, these rodents They only rest three hours a day, the equivalent of 12.5% of the time available during a day, for three consecutive weeks. Records indicate that these animals spend all this ‘extra’ time searching for females and mating with them.
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Experts believe that the debauchery of the male antechinuses could be due to a fierce sexual competition among their counterparts. Well, given that these animals only survive one year, the equivalent of one mating season, they have to do everything they can to copulate with as many partners as possible and generate offspring. “During the breeding season, males compete physically and through sperm competition for access to as many females as possible in order to maximize their reproductive success,” comment the scientists who have led this work in which, for the first time, the loss of hours of sleep as a sexual strategy is confirmed.
During mating seasons, these animals only rest 3 hours a day
“In humans and other animals, restricting the normal amount of sleep leads to worse performance, especially if it is repeated night after night. However, it seems that this does not apply to antechina during the mating season,” explains researcher Erika Zaid, from La Trobe University in Melbourne, leader of this work. According to this specialist, in fact, during these periods the males they come back”especially restless” in search of possible sexual partners. This behavior, however, has not been observed among females. Among them, no significant loss of hours of sleep is observed during the mating season. Nor are such ‘sexually kamikaze’ behaviors perceived during copulation.