- The dusky antechinus is a small, brown mammal closely related to kangaroos
- Males sacrifice hours of sleep to make more time for sex during the mating season
They may look cute and cuddly, but these male marsupials are the lotharios of the animal kingdom.
Researchers have found that the male dark antechinus – a small, brown mammal closely related to kangaroos – sacrifices hours of sleep each night to make more time for sex during mating season.
And it looks like they go out with a bang, as they die shortly afterwards.
A team from La Trobe University in Melbourne tracked the marsupials’ movements and measured things like heart rate to monitor when they were sleeping.
During the non-mating season, the antechinus dozed for approximately 15 hours per day, consisting of thousands of sleep episodes.
They may look cute and cuddly, but these male marsupials are the lotharios of the animal kingdom
Remarkably, the scientists found that the small mammals slept an average of three hours less per day, every day, for three weeks during mating season.
One male even halved his sleeping time to have sex with as many females as possible.
John Lesku, who led the research, said: ‘The males have one chance to sire offspring during a single three-week mating period.
‘We found that male, but not female, dusky antechinuses become restless during their only breeding season.’
As if it wasn’t hard enough, males only live for one year and reproduce once in their life. They usually die at the same time, right after their short and intense mating season.
The researchers suggest that the bizarre creatures may somehow thrive on less sleep during this period – or simply accept the disadvantages of staying awake to increase their chances of fathering offspring.
If a human were to lose the same amount of sleep over this extended period, they would feel drunk, the team explained.
Researchers have found that the male dark antechinus – a small, brown mammal closely related to kangaroos – sacrifices hours of sleep each night to allow more time for sex during the mating season
Erika Zaid, who also worked on the study, said: ‘In humans and other animals, restricting the normal amount of sleep leads to poorer performance when awake, an effect that worsens night after night.
‘And yet the antechinus did just that.
“It’s actually a bit surprising that these animals don’t sacrifice even more sleep during the breeding season, because they’re likely to die anyway.”
Although it is not clear what causes the deaths of males after the breeding season, the researchers do not suspect that sleep loss alone is the reason.
That’s because the males they found slept the least weren’t the ones in the worst condition, they said.
The findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.