Meet the cute little marsupials that prioritize sex over sleep
Newsy
These passionate little creatures usually sleep for 15 to 17 hours a day, but during mating season, some can slash their sleep time by more than half.
You know the song: "Live fast, die young, these furry little Australian marsupials do it well ..." Okay, maybe it doesn’t go quite like that, but you get the gist.
A group of scientists have discovered that male dusky and agile antechinuses, which resemble mice, prioritize mating over sleeping, and, sadly, after the baby-making season, they die.
In a report published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology, the researchers observed that the rise in mating activity was linked to an increase in testosterone levels.
“In a trade-off between the neurophysiological requirements for sleep and evolutionary necessity for reproduction, strong sexual selection might drive males to sacrifice sleep to increase access to fertile females and ultimately maximize their fitness,” the study noted.
Researchers say that this happens because male antechinuses are semelparous, meaning they only live through a single mating season, while females can live up to 2 years. Overall, scientists found that the males of the species, which live for about 11–12 months total, sleep three hours less per night during their final three weeks of life.
