White Tip Reef Sharks are Aggressive When Mating | Alien Abyss 103

Survival is a two part proposition: you have to survive, but so do your genes. There’s no point having all sorts of clever adaptations if you don’t pass on your own freaky genes. So, you have to find a mate, make babies, and ensure enough of them survive to carry on your legacy. The creatures of the Alien Abyss have ways of doing this that are stranger than anything a sci-fi writer could come up with.

For starters, our assumption that you a mummy needs to meet a daddy flies out the window. Some sea creatures can be mummy and daddy at the same time or change from a mummy to daddy of the other way around. Even the idea that your baby will be a boy or a girl depending on their chromosomes doesn’t always hold. Sea turtle gender is determined by the temperature at which the eggs incubate. In the age of global warming that can be a disaster – there have been no almost male green sea turtles born in parts of the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years.

Mating itself poses a problem for many sea creatures, with some truly alien solutions. Suspended in the water, male white tip reef sharks resort to using their teeth to hold on to the females in a brutal embrace. Male turtles pile onto a female as she desperately tries to surface for air. Camouflage groupers gather on a reef in their thousands to spawn in unison, but not before they’ve braved a wall of sharks that ware waiting for them. Opalescent squid all mate in a one-night orgy at the end of which all the parents die.
When it comes to making sure your offspring survives, King Penguins take the option of parental care…sort of, but in strange and twisted way. Their breeding season is 16 months go to whoa, which doesn’t line up with the seasons. In three years, they can raise two broods, but they breed three times! The middle chick just dies. Others like the horseshoe crab engage in predator swamping – just make so many babies that no number of predators could possibly kill them all. As long as it works, anything goes in the Alien Abyss.

Become a Love Nature member: https://youtube.com/c/lovenature/join

Love Nature on ROKU: https://bit.ly/3DBafVw
Love Nature Channel Finder: https://lovenature.com/channel-finder/

Subscribe to Love Nature's YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/LoveNatureYT

Connect with us on socials:
Facebook: http://bit.ly/LoveNatureFB
Instagram: http://bit.ly/LoveNatureIG
X (Twitter): http://bit.ly/LNTwitter2

#animals #wildlife #nature