‘Le Petit Mort’ or ‘the little death’ is the euphamistic term for orgasm. But for some animals, sex and death are more closely intertwined, and meeting their mate of choice really is a case of fatal attraction.
- Why do animals die during or after sex?
- What animals mate for life? Meet the most devoted couples in the animal kingdom
From the famously murderous praying mantis to the post-mating mass suicide of antichinus shrews, these 11 animals all die during or after sex.
11 animals all die during or after mating
Antichinus marsupials
Antichinus are small marsupials - about 12cm to 31cm nose to tail - with soft fur, large eyes and a pointed snout, and live in forested areas of Australia and New Guinea. But don’t let the cuteness of these small, shrew-like marsupials fool you; these animals are so focussed on sex that they literally put their all into it.
The mating period for this member of the Dasyuridae family is intense, and dependent on the availability of food coupled with competition between males for females, who mate with multiple partners.
Males have evolved to use every ounce of their energy in pursuit of mates, a mating frenzy that results in stress levels high enough to cause their immune system to collapse, followed by death. While this strategy seems extreme, it does give males the best chance of getting their genetic material into the next generation. And with sex sessions lasting up to 14 hours, it’s quite a way to bow out.
Wasp spiders
Being a male spider isn’t a lifestyle without risks, and for Argiope bruennichi - AKA wasp spiders - having sex is, more often than not, fatal.
Sexual dimorphism within spider species is significant; males are usually much smaller than the large, aggressive females. This gives them an advantage when sneaking into the female's web, as she’s much less likely to detect them and assume they are lunch.
The male spider mates by inserting one of its pedipalps into her genital structure, which then breaks off, blocking further males from inserting their reproductive materials and helping ensure it fathers young. Once the second pedipalp has broken off, the male dies… that is, if it’s not already become food for the female.
This species practices sexual cannibalism, and if the male spider isn’t quick during its first mating attempt, the female may consume it. This actually provides an advantage for the species - a nutritious meal will benefit the development of the fertilised eggs - but some quick-acting males are able to launch themselves away from the female quickly once they’ve mated to prevent this happening, and to give them one more chance of reproducing before they die.
Octopus
Sex and reproduction can be energy-intesive, so some animals have evolved to eat the snack that’s on hand - their sexual partner. Octopus cyanea is a marine example of this. Cannibalism in octopus is well known, but females of this species have been observed suffocating a male as it mates with her, then taking it back to its den to chow down on the male’s body for a couple of days.
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Sex isn’t great for longevity in female octopus either. Once they lay their eggs, they stop eating, spending all their time guarding their egg brood. They survive just long enough for the eggs to hatch, and then perish
Praying mantis
No list of animals that die during sex would be complete without mentioning probably the most famous of all sexual cannibals, the praying mantis. However, praying mantis sex is a whole lot weirder than many people realise.
Yes, the female will often bite off the head of its prospective partner. This provides plenty of nutrition, and during mating season, it’s estimated that up to 63% of a female mantids diet is made up of males of the same species. But losing their head isn’t enough to stop many males, and headless individuals have been seen to continue to initiate sex and copulate successfully, surely proving that looks aren’t everything when it comes to sex.
Pacific salmon
Poor salmon. They really do have a tough time of it. Compelled by their instincts to return to freshwater spawning grounds, they swim upstream, up rivers, even up waterfalls, before finally mating. And then they die.
To be entirely accurate, all Pacific salmon die as part of their mating process, and most but not all Atlantic salmon do too. After several years roaming the oceans, salmon return to freshwater rivers, and often the specific river in which they themselves were spawned. Intense physiological changes occur, changing their musculature to enable them to swim against intense currents, developing fierce jaws and teeth in males so they can compete for females, and powering up the reproductive organs.
Once salmon enter fresh water, they stop feeding, burning up their fat reserves as they power upstream. By the time they’ve mated, excavated a shallow nest for the eggs, and laid or fertilised them, they’re completely spent, and death comes calling.
Green anaconda
Imagine a writhing mass of sinuous limbs and multiple individuals, suffused with sexual excitation. Multiple small males jostle for contact with the much larger, more powerful female. This is a mating ball, and it’s how snakes like the green anaconda (Eunectis murinus) reproduce.
Such behaviour is not without risk, and it’s the males who often make the ultimate sacrifice. Females have been seen to strangle and consume smaller males from the mating ball, providing much-needed nutrition for gestating her offspring. This takes a whopping seven months, during which time the female will not eat, and her young are born live rather than as eggs.
Redback spiders
Redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) are also sometimes known as the Australian black widow spider, which might give you some clue as to their reproductive reputation. Clue: once again, it’s not good news for the male… although actually the males themselves might disagree.
Black widow spiders have a reputation for sexual cannibalism that isn’t entirely justified - in the wild, this doesn’t happen as often as used to be thought. But much more interestingly, male redback spiders instead commit what’s known as ‘copulatory suicide’ - they litterally throw themselves into the jaws of their mates.
Why on earth do they do this? Once again, the answer is all about passing on their genes. The male inserts a little packet of sperm into the female, and the longer the female is then preoccupied with muching down on the males juicy abdomen, the more sperm is likely to get stored. Females stow sperm within their bodies to be used at a future date, and often have sperm from multiple males. The fewer males she mates with, the more chance there is of the sacrificial males’ sperm being chosen for fertilising her eggs.
Black widow spiders are one of the deadliest spiders in the world
Twisted-wing parasites
These teeny parasitic insects, named Caenocholax fenyesi, have a fascinatingly complex lifecycle with an unusually gruesome end. Males and female parasitise different insects; the males are short-lived and infest ants, while the females have a slightly longer life and infect other members of the Hymenoptera family such as solitary bees.
Females burrow into their host and remain there for the entire life as endoparasites, with only the brood canal open to the outside world. The males introduce their sperm through this opening, then die, but the females have a different fate. The fertilised eggs develop within her body, with her developing young eventually consuming her from the inside out and then migrating out of the host to continue their own parasitic life cycle. Talk about giving your all to your kids!
Labord’s chameleon
The phrase ‘live fast, die young’ has sometimes been used to describe the life cycle of Labord’s chameleon (Furciper labordi), a vulnerable species that lives in the forests of Western Madagascar. However, it’s not entirely accurate.
True, the species has the shortest lifespan of any tetrapod vertebrate, living for only four or five months after hatching. But they spend most of their lives as eggs, so it’s more like ‘live very slowly, then fast, then die’, but that isn’t quite as catchy.
What’s particularly remarkable about this chameleon is that every single adult, male and female, dies shortly after mating. This is an adaptation to deal with the wet and dry seasons, and food availability. Eggs in the ground are dormant during the dry season, hatching with the arrival of the wet season and corresponding prey abundance. The chameleons hatch, reproduce, bury their eggs in the ground and then die off as the dry season returns. So really, life is all about enjoying the moment for this species.
Drone bees
Imagine ejaculating so hard that your reproductive organ ruptures and your abdomen splits open. Ouch. But that’s exactly what happens to drone bees.
This type of bee has only one function within the hive; to mate with the queen. They don’t have a sting, they don’t collect pollen, they can’t feed without help from the worker bees - their only goal in life is the ‘nuptial flight’ which invariably results in their death.
The drone will insert its endophallus into the queen, at which point the drone becomes paralysed and will flip backwards as he explosively ejaculates, with semen forcefully pushed through into the queen’s oviduct. So explosive, in fact, that it can sometimes be audible to the human ear; ‘pop’!
Once the drone’s body falls away, it leaves part of the endophallus attached to the queen, which helpfully acts as a target or guide for the next drone looking to copulate with her and also helps prevent semen leaking out.
11. Amazonian frog Rhinella proboscidea
Like many amphibians, the species is an explosive breeder. Males gather in huge numbers at spawning sites during the brief, desperate mating season, battling among themselves for access to females.
Some females inevitably perish in the scrum, yet they are still fair game: by mounting a dead partner and then massaging her abdomen with his legs, a male can squeeze out her cargo of eggs and fertilise them in the usual way.
