Love enters through the stomach, or so it happens to females of Corynopoma riisei , a tropical freshwater fish, as confirmed by an article published in the journal Current Biology .
When a male wants to mate, an ornament hangs from his body so that it is visible to the female he wants to conquer. Scientists have long suspected that these ornaments are shaped like food , and that females choose them based on how they resemble their favorite food.
The researchers found that, among the females that habitually feed on ants that fall in the streams, the ornaments that reproduced the shape of this animal were a success. And the same thing happened with the oval ornaments for those who preferred to eat beetles.
In addition, the scientists reproduced this sexual behavior in aquarium-raised fish . After feeding several female ants for ten days, the animals clearly preferred ornaments in this shape to those that looked like beetles.
