Antechinus: The tiny marsupials where males have sex until they die — then females eat their corpses

Name: Antechinus (Antechinus)

Where it lives: Australia

What it eats: Insects, spiders, centipedes and sometimes frogs and small reptiles

Why it's awesome: Antechinuses are little marsupials about the size of gerbils with a bizarre reproductive system: the males have sex until they die from organ failure.

There are 15 species of Antechinus all with the same deadly mating system. Their breeding season is a frenzied period lasting just two to three weeks. During this time, males give up sleep to have as much sex as possible, going for up to 14 hours at a time in the hope of passing on their genes. Once the breeding season ends, all the males drop dead.

Males die as a result of stress and exhaustion. During the mating window, testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol surge in their bodies. The increase in testosterone prevents them from processing the cortisol, causing organ failure and death.

Some male antechinuses survive, but this is very rare. "Males stop making sperm before the mating season and their testes disintegrate, so they are not even using energy on that during the mating period," Diana Fisher, a mammal ecologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, said in a statement in 2013. "But they can never reproduce again even if they do live."

Reposted from moods