Giraffes
Giraffes have a very strange way of making a love match. To check if a female is in the correct ovulation stage for mating, the male giraffe has to taste their prospective partner’s urine, and so they will follow them around waiting for her to relieve herself. The female will then urinate directly into the male’s mouth to trigger mating. Lovely!
Porcupines
Female North American porcupines can only be impregnated for between eight and twelve hours every year, so mating is a rather hurried affair. To attract their future mate’s attention, the hopeful male will encourage ovulation in their prospective partner by drenching them in a jet of urine that hits with the force of a “high-speed projectile”, according to experts.
Bowerbirds
Bowerbirds are incredibly romantic creatures, with the male attracting the attention of a mate by building elaborate, symmetrical structures out of twigs, feathers, stones and moss. Even better, these structures are designed to make the male look even bigger when they stand in front of them, in order to make them a more desirable mate.
Black Widow spiders
Everyone knows that female black widow spiders are much bigger than their mates, and so even approaching them is a pretty precarious endeavour. In order to stay safe, male black widows vigorously vibrate their abdomens when approaching females, to signal via the regular, patterned web vibrations that they are not prey animals.
Nesting dinosaurs
Even after decades of study, many things about the dinosaur kingdom are still a mystery. Nevertheless, it is believed that nesting dinosaurs in particular mated in a very unusual way. In order to impress a female before mating, the male dinosaur would dig frantically at the ground, in order to show that they would make reliable and dedicated nest-builders for the resulting eggs. How sweet!
Jumping spiders
Jumping spiders are some of the cutest spiders in the entire insect kingdom, and their mating rituals are pretty endearing too, if a little unique. Male jumping spiders have reflective UV patches on their legs that can attract the eyes of a female and so, they display by striking various poses that make the most of their glowing appendages.
Sea slugs
Sea slugs might not look particularly scary or aggressive, but their mating rituals are pretty brutal. When pairs of sea slugs come together to mate, they use a small, needle-like protrusion called a stylet to stab each other between the eyes. This needle releases a flood of hormones into their mate’s body, increasing the chances of successful fertilisation.
Red-cheeked cordon-bleu songbird
Up until recently, the mating rituals of red-cheeked cordon-bleu songbirds were considered to be pretty standard, with the male and female bobbing their heads and singing to each other in order to check their compatibility. However, it turns out that prospective mates also perform a tap dance so fast that it cannot even be picked up by high-speed cameras.
Pufferfish
Pufferfish are considered to be somewhere between scary and goofy, so it may surprise you to know that their mating rituals are actually pretty beautiful. For decades, divers and marine biologists have been noticing intricate geometric patterns underwater in the sand, and it recently came to light that these are the result of breeding males sculpting designs with their fins to attract a mate.
Bald Eagles
Bald eagles have a very high-stakes approach to mating that is terrifying to watch. Potential mating pairs will charge towards each other in the air, lock talons, and then plummet towards the ground while still locked in an embrace. At the very last minute, they separate and land, and then travel to find a suitable mating spot.
