Cuttlefish in Drag

To find a mate, males in the animal kingdom exhibit a wide range of behavior, but mimicking a female might be one of the weirdest.

In the dating game of the giant Australian cuttlefish, large males guard females by fending off other would-be suitors.  

Smaller cuttlefish can try to sneak past the bigger ones while they are fighting each other - or they can slip right under the guards' noses by taking on the appearance of a female.

Using neural control, a male cuttlefish can - within a matter of seconds - change its skin patterning, posture, and tactics to resemble a female.

"In the blink of an eye they can pull out of it and go back to being a male," said Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory.

Hanlon and his colleagues have recently shown how successful this female mimicry is.  Using video footage and genetic data, the biologists found that the imposters are successful in fertilizing the eggs of a female 60 percent of the time.

The results, published in last week's issue of the journal Nature, are surprising, say the authors, since female cuttlefish reject 70 percent of all mating attempts.

-- LiveScience Staff

Credit: Roger Hanlon