Mongolian desert beetles engage in oral sexual before mating. The longer the male performs the courtship ritual, the shorter time he needs for successful copulation later on.
When researcher Xinghu Qin ventured through rangeland near Inner Mongolia’s Hunshandake Desert, he spotted some puzzling behavior between two little beetles mating shamelessly in the open: one was constantly licking the other’s tail.
They were Mongolian desert beetles, or Platyope mongolica, which mostly hide underneath desert grasses and sands but occasionally emerge to mate. Reporting in Ecology and Evolution, Qin and his colleagues describe a newly discovered oral sexual ritual that males of the species apparently must perform before mounting females for copulation.
When a male Mongolian desert beetle finds a potential mate, he begins rubbing a protruding mouthpart called a maxillary palp over her genitals. If his performance does not meet her standards, she runs away. And the longer the male performs the oral courtship ritual, the shorter time he needs for successful copulation later on.