This month we’re taking a nervous look into the bedroom department of our local wildlife and finding some pretty unusual things.
In a previous Tawny (May 2025) I described how one of our very own native animals, the male brown antechinus, rooted itself to death in a fourteen-hour marathon shagging session. But other local creatures reproduce in “unconventional” ways too.
Some female Praying Mantises, for example, have a habit of ripping off the head and devouring the corpse of their lover during mating. This is a practice called “sexual cannibalism” (not recommended at home). Those that successfully digest their partners produce 25% more eggs.
Another male of the species that gets the rough end of the pineapple is the colourful Peacock Spider. He will dance his little heart out to impress his potential partner with the ultimate in “Saturday Night Fever” jives. But if she doesn’t like the way he moves, she will have him for breakfast (literally).
Our Weedy Sea Dragons are much more stylish. They are known to have one of the most elegant courtship rituals in the animal kingdom and mirror each other’s maritime waltzes which result in pregnancy. Ultimately the males end up carrying the eggs and even giving “birth”!
Glossy Black Cockatoos, one of our treasured local vulnerable species unusually mate for life and can be monogamous for up to 80 years!
Satin Bower birds, endemic to “God’s country”, are probably unrivalled in the courtship stakes. To impress the sheilas the male creates a spectacular “bower” out of sticks and grass. He’ll then decorate it with any bright blue object he can find, from feathers and flowers to bottle tops and clothes pegs. If a female looks slightly interested, he’ll perform Michael Jackson style strutting impersonations to woo her.
The Leopard Slug is not native to Australia but is commonly found in Peninsula back yards. To see a pair of these creatures perform their mating ritual, twisting for hours, on a thread of suspended electric blue mucous, is amazing. As hermaphrodites they mate as male and female at the same time and their penises are roughly as big as themselves.
Talking of large peckers, those little barnacles you see clinging to Northern Beaches rocks are equipped with the largest members, relative to their size, of any creature on earth. It’s around eight times longer than their bodies. But the blue whales, which occasionally swim past our coast, might not be that impressed – they have schlongs that are over three metres in length!
Not to be outdone, male ducks have todgers shaped like corkscrews and male echidnas have penises with four heads!
Swamp Wallabies, regularly seen in our bushland reserves are special breeders in a different way. The females have two uteri – meaning that they can conceive a new joey whilst already being pregnant.
But reproduction can be trickier for a native wasp found in our region. To encourage pollination, a particular orchid has evolved to look just like the wasp and it even mimics its pheromone perfume. The downside is that the male wasp ends up mating with the flower and not the female.
According to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42. That may be why koalas always thrust exactly 42 times.
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