Off-Topic :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Sex is Risky Business
Posted by:
Harold the Fly
()
Date: July 29, 2012 01:04AM
Why prolonged sex is dangerous: It can get you killed
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2012, 10:39 a.m.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bats-fly-sex-20120723,0,7289514.story
Mating can be dangerous. At least 100 years ago, biologists began to speculate that sex in the animal kingdom could be a very risky business. The noises can attract predators, the male is distracted and he has less energy to fight off an attacker or to run away. Perhaps that is why males almost always attempt to finish so quickly. Surprisingly, however, there has been little evidence to support this hypothesis until recently. Two lab studies and one in the field have shown that mating increases the risk of predation in freshwater amphipods, water striders and locusts.
Now a new study shows very strong evidence of the effect in flies.
Stefan Greif and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and his colleagues filmed a colony of Natterer's bats living in a cowshed near Marburg with a large number of houseflies. The flies rarely fly at night, sitting or running on the ceiling where the background echoes hide them from the bats. Finding the flies is nearly impossible for the bats.
But when the flies copulate, the researchers reported Monday in the journal Current Biology, they make a distinctive noise that the bats can home in on. Of the 1,105 acts of copulation observed by the researchers, bats attacked 59 times, consuming both flies almost all the time — thereby obtaining a two-for-one dinner.
To show that it was not simply the increased size of the copulating couple that attracted the bats, the researchers pinned flies in a copulating position to the ceiling. The bats ignored them. But when the team played the sounds of copulation through speakers, the bats attacked the speakers.
Said Greif: "Sex kills."
The sound of flies copulating attracts bats, who get a two-for-one dinner. (Stefan Greif / Max Planck Institute for Ornithology)
Attachments:
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2012, 10:39 a.m.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bats-fly-sex-20120723,0,7289514.story
Mating can be dangerous. At least 100 years ago, biologists began to speculate that sex in the animal kingdom could be a very risky business. The noises can attract predators, the male is distracted and he has less energy to fight off an attacker or to run away. Perhaps that is why males almost always attempt to finish so quickly. Surprisingly, however, there has been little evidence to support this hypothesis until recently. Two lab studies and one in the field have shown that mating increases the risk of predation in freshwater amphipods, water striders and locusts.
Now a new study shows very strong evidence of the effect in flies.
Stefan Greif and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and his colleagues filmed a colony of Natterer's bats living in a cowshed near Marburg with a large number of houseflies. The flies rarely fly at night, sitting or running on the ceiling where the background echoes hide them from the bats. Finding the flies is nearly impossible for the bats.
But when the flies copulate, the researchers reported Monday in the journal Current Biology, they make a distinctive noise that the bats can home in on. Of the 1,105 acts of copulation observed by the researchers, bats attacked 59 times, consuming both flies almost all the time — thereby obtaining a two-for-one dinner.
To show that it was not simply the increased size of the copulating couple that attracted the bats, the researchers pinned flies in a copulating position to the ceiling. The bats ignored them. But when the team played the sounds of copulation through speakers, the bats attacked the speakers.
Said Greif: "Sex kills."
The sound of flies copulating attracts bats, who get a two-for-one dinner. (Stefan Greif / Max Planck Institute for Ornithology)
Attachments:
Re: Sex is Risky Business
Posted by:
head scratcher
()
Date: July 29, 2012 11:01AM
I am totally floored that there aren't already 653 posts about WHAT sounds the flies make when copulating!