Voyeurs put male fish off their ideal mate

[gt3guru]

Another interesting Fish find for the box.

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13022-voyeurs-put-male-fish-off-their-ideal-mate-.html

[loopy119]

Re: Voyeurs put male fish off their ideal mate

Yeah, I've heard that if you have a male betta that you want to breed and he isn't really into doing anything with the female, add another male to the breeding tank, but put him inside of a hurricane glass globe so that they can't all get to one another. This should make the first male think that there is now competition and he should be more willing to breed... Pretty cool, thanks for the link!

Rebekah

[Leprae]

Re: Voyeurs put male fish off their ideal mate

Interesting article.  Thanks for sharing!

It makes sense that fish would be less picky if there's competition around.  Spreading your genes around is more important than only being willing to share your genes with the most superior mate available.  It'd be interesting to repeat the experiments using a clearly dominant male with the females and an inferior/submissive/whatever male looking on.  I wonder if the dominant male would still be more inclined to go for the choice females.

I'm trying to remember if I've ever heard of this occuring in other species.  I'm pretty sure that even in organized groups of animals with a clear social hierarchy, inferior males try to sneak their seed around when nobody's looking.

[loopy119]

Re: Voyeurs put male fish off their ideal mate

I think I heard about that happening with Meercats or something...inferior males sneaking in to breed with females. Maybe I heard someone talking about seeing it on that Meercat Manor show...I'm not sure though because I don't watch it... I know that when I breed my rabbits the males seem to be more eager to breed the females if they see competition in the next cage. It's pretty funny to watch!

Rebekah