The most polite mating? Meerkat mongoose mates on a tree, males wait in line, no one dares to cut the line

On the island of Madagascar, the largest carnivore is the mongoose. It looks like a cougar, but has a dog-like mouth. Its weight is much smaller than that of cougars and dogs. The adult body weight is only 5-10 kg. However, due to the lack of local carnivores, and the larger ones have smaller heads, so It is the largest carnivore in the area.

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Meerkat is good at living in trees, and like primates, they can jump in trees, but they are not as agile as monkeys. In fact, their main food is monkeys, and lemurs make up more than 50% of their diet.

Due to living in trees for a long time, they have evolved a unique way of mating: they mate on trees, and males will line up to mate, and they are not allowed to cut in line. So what's going on?

Meerkat are solitary creatures, and only briefly meet with the opposite sex when they are in heat. During estrus, males and females communicate with each other through messages emanating from glands in the thorax and lower body.

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Meerkat's mating process is in trees, and they tend to choose very tall trees, which means that if an accident occurs during the mating process, both parties may fall from the tree and die.

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The researchers found that the mongoose chose the same tree as a mating site every year, and when the estrus came, the female mongoose would occupy the upper position of the tree, waiting for the arrival of the male. Sometimes, many males will come to mate, but before going up the tree to mate, there will be a fight between the males, and only a few winners will be eligible to go up the tree.

Males after climbing up the tree line up to mate with females, and these queuing males rarely fight to cut in line, perhaps because it is too risky to fight in the tree, and already under the tree.

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These queuing males are selected by the females. If the females like each other, they will mate with it, but if they don't like each other, they will also reject each other, and even throw the male mongoose to the ground. And just like that, the females will take turns mating with the males in the tree, except for those she doesn't like.

When the female mongoose leaves, another female mongoose will occupy the tree and repeat the mating story. So if you travel to the local area, if you come across the marriage tree of the mongoose, you may be able to see the peculiar mating method of the mongoose.

Like felines, mongooses have protein barbs on their male reproductive organs, but cats use barbs to stimulate females to secrete a special hormone, which makes eggs mature rapidly, while mongooses have barbs that are made of protein. The barbs act primarily to take the ex's sperm out of the body.

The mongoose pursues a polygamous mating strategy. The reason for this reproductive strategy is that the males pay very little to produce offspring, and only need to pay a little germ cells, so even if they mate with different females, they will No loss.

Females will give birth to 2-4 offspring per litter. Since they invest more energy and pay a higher price when giving birth to offspring, they want to increase the survival rate of the cubs and increase the survival rate of the cubs. One way to do this is to make the pups more genetically diverse. By mating with different males, you can make your cubs have the genes of different males, so that the ability to resist risks will be greatly improved.

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After the cubs are born, the female cubs will develop into male reproductive organs at about 7 months, and they will become more and more similar, and they can even secrete the same secretions as the adult males, so that the People mistook it for a male mongoose.

After the estrus period, the male characteristics of the female mongoose will gradually fade away and begin to look like a real female. So what's going on with this unique body structure?

Some people think that the reason why the mongoose wants to do this may be because they are too young to compete with other males. In addition, the mongoose is a solitary creature. If they want to survive, they must have a habitat, so they " Impersonate "males" to scare off intruders.

Their strength will also increase as they reach adulthood, at which point they are able to guard their habitat even if they are not posing as males. Coupled with the fact that they will face estrus in adulthood, maintaining female characteristics at this time is conducive to attracting more males.

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Status of the Meerkat

Although the Meerkat is the largest carnivore in the region, and has a peculiar body structure and appearance, it has not received much attention, so that its protection is not as high as that of the jaguar.

In addition, the mongoose is highly dependent on the environment, and the forests in Madagascar have been deforested by humans, resulting in the continuous loss of their habitats, making their species less and less, and now they have become endangered species.

If you don't pay attention to protecting them, maybe you can only see it on film and television materials in the future!