While a lack of sleep is known in humans to decrease health, mood, and, well, libido, it might just be an essential ingredient in some animals’ sex lives. In a new paper published in Current Biology, a team uncovered the unorthodox sexual strategies of a plucky, furry creature called the antechinus.
What Is an Antechinus?
For the uninitiated, antechinus are a grouping of mice-like marsupials, which carry 15 equally cute species in their ranks. Like all marsupials, and unlike us placentals, their babies are born even smaller and more helpless than ours and kept in the safety of a pouch.
Of course, before these babies are born, the creatures must mate. And here is where the antechinuses deviate from the norm.
