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By Glenn Garvin
McClatchy Newspapers
Published on Sunday, Apr 06, 2008
The main question raised by What Females Want and Males Will Do, a documentary on mating rituals in the animal world that airs tonight and April 13 as part of the PBS series Nature, is this: How do biologists ever reproduce? As a species, they seem dimmer, weirder and far more sinister than any of the slithering lizards or baboons they study.
Consider Gail Patricelli, a University of California-Davis researcher who has spent years in the brush studying the sexual impulses of the sage grouse. Her conclusion: ''The males are not that picky about who they spend time courting. We often see males on the prairie trying to mate with cow pies.'' Somebody unhobbled by an advanced degree in biology could have figured that out after observing about 10 minutes of a Saturday night on Miami's South Beach.
Quite aside from confirming all your worst suspicions about your high school biology teacher, What Females Want (which airs at 7 p.m. on WNE0/WEO, Channels 45/49, and at 8 p.m. on WVIZ, Channel 25 on consecutive Sundays) is a highly entertaining piece of work that allows you to cloak your sleaziest voyeuristic instincts in high-minded erudition. If your co-workers catch you in the break room peering closely at cockroaches getting it on, they'd have you arrested; but watch it on What Females Want and it's science.
By the way, that example is not hypothetical. Cockroaches. Spiders. Snakes. Lizards. Bats. Elephants. They're all seen doing it, especially the females. It turns out animal chicks are kind of slutty, moving in with mates who bring home the bacon or grub worms or whatever, but then hooking up with any random stranger who flashes some hot plumage.
''There's a lot of cheating going on,'' said Colorado biologist Rebecca Safran.
The main question raised by What Females Want and Males Will Do, a documentary on mating rituals in the animal world that airs tonight and April 13 as part of the PBS series Nature, is this: How do biologists ever reproduce? As a species, they seem dimmer, weirder and far more sinister than any of the slithering lizards or baboons they study.
Get the full article here.
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