Saturday, April 1, 2023
Village Voice News
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • Future Notes
    • Blackout
    • From The Desk of Roysdale Forde SC
    • Diplomatic Speak
    • Mark’s Take
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • The Herbal Section
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Book Review 
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • Future Notes
    • Blackout
    • From The Desk of Roysdale Forde SC
    • Diplomatic Speak
    • Mark’s Take
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • The Herbal Section
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Book Review 
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Village Voice News
No Result
View All Result
Home Global

Sex is a death sentence for male quolls

Admin by Admin
February 6, 2023
in Global
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice.

By Clare Roth- It’s a hard life: Researchers think quolls, native to Australia, could be dying because sex is keeping them from sleep.

Imagine you have sex with a man, who, after impregnating you, goes out into the night, climbing, jumping, galloping and bounding through the streets in search of other sex partners. Each day, he travels up to 35 kilometers.

READ ALSO

Chinese premier stresses need to improve Party conduct, build clean government

Xi meets Malaysian PM

When you meet him a few weeks later, you notice he’s not doing very well. He has lost some hair and is thinner than when you first met him. He tells you he’s only been sleeping one hour per night.

You are concerned, but he keeps at it. After leaving your apartment, he takes off on another 35km jaunt across the city, seeking new sex partners.

Advertisement

The cycle continues until one day, about a month later, you find out he is dead.

Sex drives male quolls to death

This is the story of how endangered male quolls — a sharp-toothed, rat-like marsupial native to Australia — reproduce. They are the largest mammal known to die within a single mating season, a reproductive process called semelparity.

Pacific salmon are also known to be semelparous, as well as some species of butterflies and octopus.

But their female counterparts don’t experience this early death nearly as often. On average, female quolls survive around four mating seasons.

Researchers looking to understand this difference in lifespan set out to track the daily activity of the male and female sexes to see if the males were engaging in riskier behavior than the females.

They fitted 13 northern quolls on the Australian island of Groote Eylandt with tiny backpacks containing a little speedometer-type device that tracked the animals’ movements. In order to trap the quolls, the researchers baited them with dog food.

Researchers facilitated the quoll experiment on the Australian island of Groote Eylandt, located off the country’s northern coastImage: Spacephotos/agefotostock/IMAGO

Their results were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The researchers found that over the course of a day, some of the male quolls were traveling very far distances and resting much less than the females. Some of the male quolls traveled 10km in a day — the human equivalent is around 35km, author Christofer Clemente told DW in an email.

And they only rested an average of 7% of the day. That’s about one hour.

The females, on the other hand, rested around 24% of the day — five hours — which Clemente said was normal.

This lack of sleep could be making the quolls more vulnerable to predator attacks, the researchers wrote, or could simply be causing death due to exhaustion.

What’s the rush?

When quoll mating season starts, all females become receptive at the same time, and only for a very short period — around three weeks. During this period, the male quolls invest virtually all their time in breeding, said Clemente, in order to increase their reproductive output.

The study forms part of a larger investigation into animal movement and behavior.

Scientists hope to understand how movement is linked to habitat and animals’ ability to escape predators.

“The quolls are of conservation significance, so if we can understand their movement, we might be better able to conserve this species,” said Clemente. (DW)

 



Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice



ShareTweetSendShareSend

Related Posts

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, speaks at a State Council meeting on clean governance, March 31, 2023. Ding Xuexiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Chinese vice premier, presided over the meeting. The meeting was attended by Li Xi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)
Global

Chinese premier stresses need to improve Party conduct, build clean government

by Admin
April 1, 2023

BEIJING, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Friday called for persistent efforts to improve Party conduct and...

Read more
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Malaysia's Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 31, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)
Global

Xi meets Malaysian PM

by Admin
April 1, 2023

BEIJING, (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Malaysia's Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Beijing on Friday....

Read more
In this April 9, 2019 file photo, Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, discusses legislation to restrict the use of deadly force by police, during a hearing on the measure in Sacramento, Calif. Jones-Sawyer is one of two lawmakers on the reparations task force responsible for mustering support from state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom before any reparations could become reality.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
Global

Reparations for Black Californians could top $800 billion

by Admin
March 31, 2023

By Janie Har- It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate...

Read more
Next Post

Iran To Help Venezuela Overhaul Major Refinery Complex

EDITOR'S PICK

Lammy out, Bourne in on NRF

August 31, 2022

Education sector gets $52B

September 10, 2020
TSA staff found cat alive in suitcase

Airport staff find cat trapped in suitcase

November 24, 2022

Govt announces gun amnesty programme

November 14, 2021

© 2022 Village Voice | Developed by Ink Creative Agency

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • Future Notes
    • Blackout
    • From The Desk of Roysdale Forde SC
    • Diplomatic Speak
    • Mark’s Take
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • The Herbal Section
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Book Review 
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us

© 2022 Village Voice | Developed by Ink Creative Agency