![\"Topi\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/files\/2010\/05\/Topi.jpg\" "\\"Topi\\"")
“There are lions and cheetahs and leopards out there, my dear. You’d be better off staying here with me.”<\/p>\n“There are lions and cheetahs and leopards out there, my dear. You’d be better off staying here with me.”<\/p>\n
This is how male topi antelope lie for sex.<\/p>\n
The area of Kenya where they live, Masai Mara National Reserve<\/a>, is indeed filled with large predators that find antelopes to be just delicious, and so the topi have developed warning calls that they sound when it’s time to scurry away or else be eaten. But, according to an American Naturalist<\/em> study<\/a>, the devious topi males have figured out how to use their calls to fake the threat of immediate danger and keep females around, according to research leader Jakob Bro-J\u00f8rgensen.<\/p>\n From February to March, male topi hold small territories through which receptive females pass to assess each male\u2019s mating potential.\u00a0The authors noticed that, while a female in estrus was on a male\u2019s territory, the male would sometimes emit alarm calls, even in the complete absence of a predator. These false alarms are acoustically indistinguishable from true alarm snorts [Ars Technica<\/a>].<\/p>\n <\/span>The motivation is easy to see: Normally, during the one day a year that a female topi is sexually receptive, she’ll have sex 11 times with four separate males, on average. However, if a male cries “wolf”\u2014or in this case, perhaps “hyena”\u2014she might stick around his territory, which improves his reproductive odds. Indeed, the researchers found that the males almost never made false predator calls unless there was a lady around and he didn’t want her to wander.<\/p>\n “In fact, males quite frequently pull the trick on females in heat and one may ask why females keep responding to alarms at all,” Bro-J\u00f8rgensen said. “The answer seems to be that females are better off erring on the side of caution, because failing to react to a true alarm could easily mean death in a place like the Masai Mara, where it’s literally crawling with large predators” [MSNBC<\/a>].<\/p>\n The mating game is full of liars and cheaters, or course\u2014just check out DISCOVER’s gallery of the worst offenders<\/a>. Because their prevarication employs the fear of death, topi are among the most successful, too. After a fake snort of alarm the males, on average, got to have sex nearly three more times. So expect the lying to continue.<\/p>\n Check out DISCOVER’s page on Facebook.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Related Content: Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n “There are lions and cheetahs and leopards out there, my dear. You’d be better off staying here with me.” This is how male topi antelope lie for sex. The area of Kenya where they live, Masai Mara National Reserve, is indeed filled with large predators that find antelopes to be just delicious, and so the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNot Exactly Rocket Science: Eland Antelopes Click Their Heels To Prove Their Dominance<\/a>
\nDISCOVER: The Best Ways To Sell Sex<\/a>
\nDISCOVER: The Mating Game’s Biggest Cheaters<\/a> (photo gallery)<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"