We often think nature is beautiful or savage or perplexing or wild. In truth, it is all of the above.
Nature is the sum total of all of the different and interesting ways living organisms have come to interact on this planet. It is not that nature is amoral, as morality has little to do with it. Survival and reproduction are the only criteria.
This is why some behaviours might seem bizarre from our perspective, but are only because we are applying human morality. For the animals involved, it is just the way things have evolved.
Consider the poor female bed bug. I know the idea of feeling sorry for a bed bug is not a natural inclination. They are tiny creatures who typically hide in piles of clothing, mattresses, wall sockets or anywhere they can in the bedroom. About once a week, a female bed bug comes out of hiding for a meal consisting of human blood.
As she heads back to her hiding place, she is well fed and at her most fertile. This is where things get ugly as she is quickly approached by several males. Bed bugs use a rather bizarre mating technique called traumatic insemination. Essentially, the male simply pierces the body wall of the female with his penis and injects sperm into her body cavity.
The damage to the female is quite devastating and if she is approached by too many males, she will often die from their efforts. After all, too many puncture wounds are dangerous. But it is the only way the species has of producing the next generation.
While the process might kill the female bed bug, to the male all that matters is that his sperm are the ones doing the fertilization.
As a general rule, the last male to mate with a particular female gets to father about 68 per cent of the offspring. So even if the female has been penetrated by four or five other males and is close to death, it is still in the male's best interest to mate. From our perspective, the whole thing is gruesome even if it is happening to a bedbug but it is how their reproductive process has evolved.
A less aggressive, but perhaps more bizarre, case of reproduction involves a species of bird called a ruff. They are a type of wading sandpiper and the female looks similar to the type of sandpiper you might see at any beach.
The male ruffs are a much more diverse bunch as there are three different types. There are territorial males, satellite males and female mimics. The latter are males who are comparable in size and colouring to a typical female ruff.
Each male type competes for females in a mating territory, called leks, and each does so in a different way. The territorial males are identifiable by their dark plumage and size. They are aggressive within groups. They each mark out their territory and try to attract females to come inside.
Satellite males have white plumage, very distinct from the territorial male, and they do not establish their own territory. They co-occupy territories which belong to the territorial male. They are less aggressive and actually compliment the territorial males.
To put it in human terms, they literally act as the territorial male's wing man.
Sometimes, though, when the dominant male isn't paying attention, they get to sneak in and fertilize one of the females.
The behavior of the female mimics is quite unique as they are opportunistic breeders. They blend in with the females, moving along with them as the females approach the territorial male. The territorial male puts on an elaborate show for the female with the aid of his wing man.
When the female is sufficiently aroused, she will crouch down to mate. The female mimic, if he is quick enough, will hop onto her back before the ornamented males have a chance.
Indeed, the territorial and satellite males will often jump onto the back of the female mimic resulting in a rather bizarre three-way arrangement.
But the female mimics will sometimes engage in even sneakier behaviour as they will crouch like a female to draw an ornamented male away from the real females. By doing so, they prevent the ornamented male from mating.
The collective behaviour must find its balance as all three types of male are successful at some point or other. The species has evolved this breeding mechanism and it is encoded in their chromosomes. There is a dominant gene which results in half the male offspring of satellites being satellites, half the male offspring of mimics being mimics and any male offspring without the genetic code is born a territorial male.
Nature is fascinating and diverse but perhaps nowhere more so than when it comes to reproduction of the species.
