Males use prongs to mate females

The males of a freshwater fish in Canada have evolved with prongs on their heads to force females to mate with them.

Scientists from the University of Toronto in Canada have found that males of Poecilia reticulata use prongs on their genitals to force resistant females to deliver. coordinate with them.

Dr. Lucia Kwan and the police conducted a study of the strange prongs on the genitals of the male guppies. They found that the prongs on the genital organs of males make the resistant fish difficult to flee during mating.

Barbs on the head of the genitalia of male guppies

Scientists had surgery to remove the prongs from the genital organs of some male guppies to explore the effects of prongs in mating with resistant females. They compared the amount of ejaculated semen of the male group that had been removed from the prongs and the group of fish that were not cut off the prongs on the genitals, after they mated with voluntary and involuntary females.

'The results of our research show that prongs are used to increase the amount of spermatozoa for children who do not want to mate. This evolution is believed to help male fish mate with more females even if females don't want to mate with them , 'said Dr. Lucia Kwan, head of research.

Dr Kwan said the prongs also helped male fish release three times as much semen as males who had surgery to remove the prongs.

The cause of male guppies evolving with prongs in the external genitalia is thought to be a mating conflict between females and males. This conflict occurs when their mating criteria are different. Males lose less energy to breed, while females produce large, labor-intensive eggs.

This makes males prefer to mate with many females, while females tend to choose mates to mate.