Photo: Sex in Nature: White men, you can’t beat this guy! Meet the man: 14 hours of sex until DEATH!!!
[Nature is wild, fascinating and weirdly creepy at times. Gents, no matter how horny or sexed up you are, you just can't beat this little fellow. Meet THE MAN…
Yep, this little Australian fellow, puts a whole new meaning to the phrase, "until death do us part". In his case, once he gets going … he keeps boinking the females … until he's DEAD! Now that's what I call ENERGY and MOTIVATION!!! Jan]
For a two- or three-week stretch in early spring, Australian forests reverberate with the sexual shenanigans of the male antechinus. These tiny, tireless marsupials can engage in a single intimate encounter for 14 hours straight. Desperate, virile and indefatigable, each of these bitty boys will mate with as many females as possible, plugging away until the fur sloughs off his skin, his immune system fails and blood pools around his organs. In a grand culmination of this fornication feat, the male antechinus physically disintegrates: He quite literally boinks himself to death, usually just shy of his first birthday.
So-called suicidal reproduction might sound absurd, but vigorous, organ-shredding sex is the antechinus males’ way of outcompeting each other in the reproductive race to father the most young. The more sperm a male churns out, the more successful he’ll be. A sexual sprint to the death is the antechinus’ one shot at passing on his genes, and he puts every second of it to good use.