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Bad News for Roosters: If You Aren't King of the Henhouse, Your Ejaculate Will Be Ejected

Explore the corkscrew kookiness of duck genitalia, a wild example of sexual conflict in birds that reveals hens’ sperm ejection behavior.

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WHAT? Noooooooo!

If you haven't heard about the corkscrew kookiness that is duck genitalia by now, you need to check that stuff out ASAP

. Ducks' twisting vaginas and telescoping penises are well-known part of an evolutionary arms race between the sexes that's been going on for millennia, with each side trying to exert control over which males' sperm fertilize the female's eggs---a battle that, especially in birds, is fierce, occasionally violent, and weird as all-get-out. The most recently discovered example of what biologists deem "sexual conflict

," a little behavior hens have developed called sperm ejection

, upholds that fine tradition. Hens, like many female birds, don't always have a lot of control over who mates with them. Roosters tend to resort to "sexual coercion," aka rape, and so a female might have any number of sexual partners that she didn't get to choose. What's a hen to do? ...

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