Penis fencing. Exploding genitals. Excrement showers.
Antechinus, a tiny Australian marsupial, breeds so hard in a few weeks that it essentially screws itself to death.
The male antechinus has all the sex it will have in its life in the space of two or three deadly weeks. Desperately trying to mate with as many females as possible in as short a time as possible, its unusually large testes swollen with sperm and its bloodstream flooded with stress hormones, the antechinus literally destroys its own body in a frantic, fortnight-long sexual marathon. Each mating session is violent, and can last up to fourteen hours. After too much of this, the increasingly exhausted antechinus's body cannot take the strain: it starts bleeding internally, its immune system fails, it develops ulcers and gangrene, and its fur falls out. But even though its body is disintegrating, the antechinus keeps feverishly trying to cop off with the (increasingly reluctant) females, urgently trying to squeeze out one last suicidal shag before its flesh gives up entirely, and the antechinus dies of sex.
This kind of kamikaze breeding strategy is technically known as "semelparity", and you can read a lot more about why the various species of antechinus adopt such a reckless approach to their love lives in this delightful article from Ed Yong.
Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed
Female Chinese Fruit Bats contort themselves to give the male fellatio while they're having sex.
This happens in 70% of encounters: the female licks the male's shaft while he's penetrating her.
We're not sure why they do this. According to Min Tan of China's Guangdong Entomological Institute, the sex lasts on average 100 seconds longer than when they don't do it, which could be conducive to fertilization or stopping other female bats stealing their mate. It might be about cleanliness. It might also be about hygiene.
Via youtube.com
The short-beaked echidna's balls increase in size by 200% when mating season begins.
For a start, this image is a representation, because it has internal testes.
So what happens is this. The short-beaked echidna looks for a mate between May and September. In the months beforehand, the male's testes grow. A lot.
Then it gets weird.
In a practise as delightful-sounding as it actually is, the female turns her cloaca inside out and wipes it on the ground, smearing a goo everywhere. It is believed to be an aphrodisiac.
Trains of up to 10 males, often with the youngest and smallest male at the end of the queue, can follow a single female in a courtship ritual that may last for a month. They all forage for food together.
There may well be fighting, and some of the males may back off, but eventually there'll be a guy at the front of the pack. He'll sniff her bits, and she may reject him by rolling into a ball.
If she doesn't, he gets his penis out, and it gets even weirder. Brace yourself.
Alan White / BuzzFeed
That would be a penis with four heads that can take turns.
Echidna sex is weird.
Via buzzfeed.com
