The mating game

SO how do you like to be wooed? With gifts of wine and roses? It seems we're not alone in falling for the guy with the most impressive line in come-on signals. Almost all animals, birds, fish and insects play an eager mating game to attract a partner.

Giving gifts isn't restricted to flowers, chocs or diamonds. How would you like a fly, carefully wrapped up in silk?

It's the gift of a male spider, Pisaura mirabilis, who is motivated by self-preservation as much as passion when looking for a mate. The females are large and may mistake him for a meal.

It's not until the female takes the fly and her fangs are embedded safely in her dinner that the male can have his way with her.

It's just one of the bizarre courtship rituals described at an exhibition now running at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring, called The Mating Game.

It's designed particularly for younger visitors, so we don't get details of what happens next. But we do get an intriguing insight into the lengths males go to in order to find a mate and win her over. It's sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, sometimes totally whacky.

Take the mandrill (right), a type of baboon. The face and backside of the dominant male in a group becomes a glowing blue and red, which attracts the ladies and repels junior males.

Some romantic guys know the enticing power of a gentle touch. The male American alligator strokes the female while rumbling gently and blowing bubbles against her cheeks. Courtship is slow and quiet and can last for a number of days before mating takes place. Ah, that's a male who knows how to treat a girl.

Or perhaps you prefer a bit of action to turn you on. Quite a few birds and animals dance. The blue-backed manakins, small birds with blue backs and scarlet caps, team up to attract a female with distinctive calls and ritual acrobatic dances. Two males sit side by side on a branch, bouncing alternately. If the female shows interest, the males turn to acrobatics.

One leaps into the air, hovers, then flies backwards to land behind the other who repeats the action, faster and faster. They end up whirling around each other like a Catherine wheel, with the female sitting back watching the show.

Some creatures emit smells or sounds to attract a partner (visitors to the exhibition can sniff jaguar scent or listen to the soulful call of the humpback whale). Others may show off by puffing up their feathers, growing a crest, or building an elaborate courtship bower to tempt their lover.

But for most female visitors to the exhibition, none of these courtship ploys matches the winning ways of the male seahorse.

Paul Kitching, one of the organisers of the exhibition, says: "Our model of a male seahorse is always the focus for our women visitors. They just love to see the male having to produce the offspring."

Lucky female seahorse. She lays up to 200 eggs through a long tube into a swollen pouch in the male's abdomen.

A few weeks later when the eggs have developed into baby seahorses, the male grips a piece of seaweed stem with his tail. He bends his body backwards and forwards in convulsions that can last up to ten days, shooting the babies out of the pouch.

His partner just wafts around enjoying herself while he gets on with it.

The Mating Game, Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum, Tring, continues until November 27. Admission is free. www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tring, 020 7942 6171