heneghan@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (joseph.t.heneghan) (11/07/89)
I never really concerned myself with this until recently. A female lays unfertilized eggs. If they are to become fertile, the male must be envolved in a most intuitive way. My question concerns the hardware and the method. Do males have penises like mammals, or do they somehow spray the appropriate area. The reason I ask the question is I'm familiar with mammals and livebearer fish, but never really pondered the issue of egg laying. Probably for most of you, this is old information. I suppose I could have gone to the library, but I thought this might be good food for discussion and possibly a good laugh! Joe Heneghan
mary@dinorah.wustl.edu (Mary E. Leibach) (11/07/89)
You are not really being too personal, Dayna and Del mate in front of me all the time and are not the least bit concerned. Maybe someone else can tell you about the anatomy, I don't watch them through a microscope. What I can tell you is how Zebra Finches go about it. First off, Dayna and Del meet each other when Mary buys them and takes them home. They play a little in their temporary cage until the big cage Mary ordered arrives via UPS. Then they move into the cage, and start getting intimate. They play together, eat together, preen each other, sleep next to each other, etc. Then they get serious. They go on a perch in the open where there is lots of room. They may preen briefly. Then the male begins an excited call, and twirls his tail (hard to describe, but you would know it if you saw it). He hops/flys on top of the female's back, and holds on with his feet. With him on top of her (cross between a dog mounting a bitch and a man riding a horse), he mates with her. They separate, the male hopping to a perch, and the female straightening her feathers. The whole thing takes a second or two. Del has his technique down pat, because he has actually fertilized eggs, but he keeps tearing up the nest, she keeps abandoning it, and someone tosses eggs. They usually mate right when they get up, before breakfast. Well, now you know. Personally, I don't think humans are the only species that has sex for recreational purposes, I think birds, particularly in captivity, mate for enjoyment as well as out of instinct. You can learn a lot from watching pet birds. I rather doubt a truly wild bird would mate six inches from my nose. -Mary
rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (R C. Buchmann) (11/08/89)
Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: Re: How do birds mate (at the risk of being too personal) Summary: Expires: References: <2918@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> Sender: Reply-To: rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (R C. Buchmann) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Keywords: Plumbing In article <2918@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> heneghan@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (joseph.t.heneghan) writes: >My question concerns the >hardware and the method. Do males have penises like mammals, or >do they somehow spray the appropriate area. The reason I ask the >question is I'm familiar with mammals and livebearer fish, but >never really pondered the issue of egg laying. Probably for most >of you, this is old information. I suppose I could have >gone to the library, but I thought this might be good food for >discussion and possibly a good laugh! Actually, a bird's interal plumbing is very compact, because of weight limtiations due to flight. Instead of having a separate bladder and rectum, birds have a common reservoir at the end of their urinary, digestive, and reproductive tracts called the _cloaca_, or "vent". When birds mate, the male usually hops on top of the female, both of them push their tails aside, the undertail coverts are drawn away, and the two cloacae are brought together. Birds _do_ practice internal fertilization. However, some groups of birds, notably waterfowl (especially ducks) and games birds (grouse, pheasant, etc.) _do_ have grooved, erectile penises that are held in a chamber outside of the cloaca. However songbirds (Zebra Finches included) must do it the old-fashioned way. And by the way, the person (I can't recall the name, sorry) who said that birds might have some conception (pun intended ;-}) of recreational sex has some merit. What with this long Indian Summer were having in Illinois, the House Sparrow males have been getting together and harassing the females. It's hilarious to watch a large group of aroused male House Sparrows noisily attacking a female, only to be driven off. (An aside--when a male House Sparrow is aroused, it adopts a posture which includes a cocked tail and drooping wings). How one female can hold off 6 attacking males without a copulation taking place I don't know. But they really get involved--once I had a group fly inside my house and start tussling right there on my living room floor. They took some persuasion to leave, too. Hope this helps you out some!! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- R. Cody Buchmann ^.^ "Kehaar" email: rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu "Now I fly for you..." - Watership Down ------------------------------------------------------------------------------