Health & Medicine
Love Hurts: Bowmouth Guitarfish Killed During Sex
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Jul 24, 2013 02:48 PM EDT
Love doesn't just hurt. For some, it kills.
And we don't have to look to Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," the play Romeo and Juliet or our recently dumped, very moody friend, to know that.
We can just look to, well, the animal kingdom.
According to a report from the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky, via Live Science, the death of a female shark ray, an aquatic creature also known as a bowmouth guitarfish, was killed during the act of mating with her lover male bowmouth.
"Mating is kind of a violent act," Mark Dvornak, general curator of the Newport Aquarium, told USA Today. "Everybody thinks of roses and chocolate. There is nothing romantic about it." (We're guessing he meant for these guys... Unless he was talking about sadism.)
And it's true--shark rays do not have the most pleasant mating experience. They may, in fact, bite each other during the sex act, and in order to hold the female down, the male will bite one of the female's fins in order to secure that the process takes place.
Unfortunately, this sadist shark got a bit carried away and accidentally killed his lover.
"We knew through her behavior something was amiss," Dvornak said, via Live Science.
Following the female's removal from the exhibit, an ultrasound showed that she was bleeding internally, and she died soon after.
But death during the act of sex isn't limited to these guys.
Just take a look at the black widow spider, who consumes her mate during an act of sexual cannibalism. And plenty of other weird, obscure creatures have been known to follow in similar footsteps.
We'll just stick to TLC, thank you.
See Now:
NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
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First Posted: Jul 24, 2013 02:48 PM EDT
Love doesn't just hurt. For some, it kills.
And we don't have to look to Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," the play Romeo and Juliet or our recently dumped, very moody friend, to know that.
We can just look to, well, the animal kingdom.
According to a report from the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky, via Live Science, the death of a female shark ray, an aquatic creature also known as a bowmouth guitarfish, was killed during the act of mating with her lover male bowmouth.
"Mating is kind of a violent act," Mark Dvornak, general curator of the Newport Aquarium, told USA Today. "Everybody thinks of roses and chocolate. There is nothing romantic about it." (We're guessing he meant for these guys... Unless he was talking about sadism.)
And it's true--shark rays do not have the most pleasant mating experience. They may, in fact, bite each other during the sex act, and in order to hold the female down, the male will bite one of the female's fins in order to secure that the process takes place.
Unfortunately, this sadist shark got a bit carried away and accidentally killed his lover.
"We knew through her behavior something was amiss," Dvornak said, via Live Science.
Following the female's removal from the exhibit, an ultrasound showed that she was bleeding internally, and she died soon after.
But death during the act of sex isn't limited to these guys.
Just take a look at the black widow spider, who consumes her mate during an act of sexual cannibalism. And plenty of other weird, obscure creatures have been known to follow in similar footsteps.
We'll just stick to TLC, thank you.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone