Have you ever seen wildlife mating? I ask because I saw a pair of red-shouldered hawks making the double-backed beast of spring today and I bet many of you have fun stories
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My wife and I were volunteer divers at a local aquarium. While feeding stingrays, it was easiest to lay prone on the exhibit floor where the stingray mouths were. The resident rescue hawksbill turtle came over to my wife and attempted to mate with her pink fins.
Good question. It is amazing. if you have time I suggest walking about a 1/2 mile into a wooded state/federal park in late March with a friend. Bring books, binoculors and a camera, then sit quietly for about 2 hours. If lucky you'll see alot. PS - I discovered doing that accidentally.
Does it count if they're at a zoo? Because I think I'd need more than one hand to count the number of times I've seen snow leopards going at it. It's uh, loud.
Hedgehogs make surprisingly loud noises when in the act. That's how we became aware of what was going on in granddad's garden, and had great seats for the show at the kitchen window. (If they didn't want us to watch, they wouldn't have been out in the open and so loud, surely?)
We live on a river, and every now and then we see a pair of ducks going at it. It's very quick and very funny. Then I learned that a duck penis is shaped like a corkscrew, and, well, it fits! So to speak.
This was a couple years ago now, but a pair of red-tailed hawks were, you know, in a tree and I said to the 4 year old watching them, "They're getting married." No, she said, "they're mating." I saw her point.
Dark shapes on the pond at night. Paddled out in canoe… snapping turtles mating at the surface! Paddled back home and brought out my mother (a high school biology teacher)
Once, at a national park, we saw two buffalo chasing each other. At first I thought they were fighting, but in the words of Jack Nicholson, "wrong verb."
oh yes.. most recently collared peccaries (aka javelina) right outside my office window (I live in the rural Southwest, work from home).
I mean really --- get a room, I'm trying to work in here!
Two wild ponies at Assateague.
I think they did some damage to the tent across from me, but I was surprised it was still standing, just a little trampled on one corner.
Hippos in Tanzania. They have to perform in water because otherwise the male would crush the female. Best part was I was explained this by two local Catholic priests I was friends with who I was watching it with.
At the Darwin exhibition a few years back at the Royal Ontario Museum, they had two live turtles or tortoises… whom one of the newspapers described as “frisky.”
not in the wild, but I used to work at the reptile house and we had Aldabra tortoises and if you know tortoises I don't even have to finish that sentence
I saw lions mating in Kenya. It was surprisingly loud, violent, and sad. The male was exhausted. The female was running the show. Hitting him to wake up. The moment of release sounded like a toilet being unblocked. It was over almost as soon as it started. The male was asleep again in seconds.
Walking through the New Orleans zoo once, I heard a weird groan, very regularly about every 30 seconds. It turned out to be two good-sized tortoises mating, very slowly. There also was a dad awkwardly trying to explain the scene to his small children.
But the best mating display I have ever seen was two large slugs intertwined and hanging on a long translucent thread, each with a ghostlike appendage pulsing into the other. It was beautiful.
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Growing up on a small farm in a rural area means you get to see lots of sex all around you lol
Dangerous water dancing of two dinosaurs.
A mom near me turned to her kid and said in her NC drawl, “Awwww, he’s giving her sugar.”
As they left, my kids looked at me confused and said, “I thought they were having sex?”
I mean really --- get a room, I'm trying to work in here!
I think they did some damage to the tent across from me, but I was surprised it was still standing, just a little trampled on one corner.
I had “can you feel the love tonight” stuck in my head for a week
I've had crows do it while hanging out on my porch. it's very brief but they often fall off the railing while doing it
saw some sparrows continue doing it while falling to the ground once