When you are hungry and need an extra boost of energy,the female southern bottletail squid (Sepiadarium austrinum )does not doubt it:ingest part of the semen that your partner ejaculates. This is the conclusion reached by Bob Wong and his colleagues at Monach University (Australia) in a study publishedBiology Letters. This is the first time this behavior has been observed in a cephalopod.
The semen ejaculated by this speciescontains nutrients that help sperm survive, which also makes it a possible food in case the female needs energy during sex. According to the researchers, this would also explain why males prefer to mate with larger females: it is the only way to reduce the consumption of their ejaculate to a minimum and have more opportunities for their sperm to fertilize the eggs and thus perpetuate their genes in their offspring. .
During copulation, the female stores the sperm released by the male in “bundles” (spermatophores) in an external bag located under her oral cavity. Females use their tentacles to try to quickly lay the eggs on the spermatophores, since they have three weeks for fertilization before they begin to degrade. But some of those spermatophores are eaten by the female to help develop more eggs. The smaller the female, the less sperm she uses for fertilization. “Males who copulate with small females pay a high price, because they need to ingest more semen“conclude the authors, who assure that if a male decides to deliver his semen to one of these females, he is facilitating the next male that crosses his path to have more reproductive success.” The sperm that does not participate in the ‘race’ to fertilizing ovules, because it ends up in the female’s digestive system, is useless “, the authors clarify, thus explaining why southern squid prefer to mate with the more voluminous and” plump “females .br>
