Absurd Creatures | Behold the Super Weird Face-to-Face Sex of the Springtail
Released on 06/20/2016
(playful music)
[Narrator] Alright, cut it out.
That's enough horsing around.
Just, just knock it off.
Yes, you as well.
These kind of pissed off looking arthropods
are globular springtails.
And they aren't actually fighting,
they're getting it on.
But, before we get to that,
there are lots of kinds of springtails.
They're called springtails because they've
got an appendage kind of like a tail
that they use to fire themselves out of danger.
Check this out
here in the circle in the upper right.
He he, I'm not sure why that's so funny.
Anyway, the globular springtails.
When a boy globular springtail
and a girl globular springtail love each other very much
they kiss for a long time.
The bigger one here is in fact the female.
The tiny male uses his specially shaped antennae
to hook onto his giant lady's face.
Thus begins their less than graceful first dance.
By waiving him around,
the female's pretty much saying I'll take some sperm please.
He'll deposit that sperm on the ground as a tower
called a spermatophore and guide her on top of it.
Then she'll take up the spermatophore
into her genital aperture as it's known.
So, yeah,
he's essentially a sperm gun she wields with her face.
And, there you have it.
Making babies the old fashioned way
with a sperm gun.
Alright, fine.
Maybe that isn't very old fashioned.
NASA Finds More Evidence of Water Plumes on Jupiter's Moon Europa
Jumping Spiders Jump Around, Jump Up, Jump Up, and Get Down
The Scrappy Little Mouse That Turns Venom Into a Painkiller
Absurd Creatures | Bats Are Totally Awesome. Trust Me, I'm a Vampire
These Fish Were Made for Walking and That's Just What They Do
How Alan Tudyk Became Rogue One's K-2SO
Meet the Robot that Presses Vinyl in 30 Seconds
Absurd Creatures | The Bizarre Sea Spider Won’t Bite. We Promise.
We Tested A Real-Life Iron Man Glove
Minneapolis - Perceived Boundaries with Kate Casanova - Station to Station