Bees

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge came up with the metaphor “the birds and the bees” in the context of love in his 1825 collection “Work Without Hope”, there is absolutely NO WAY he knew anything about the bees mating ritual, and if he did, he was one sick man.

The reason why you ask? Well……..when the male is ready to inseminate the queen during copulation, his testicles literally explode, killing him. I can hear you sitting there reading this going ‘wait…..WHAT!??!!?’ but believe it or not there is a reason for this most explosive of adaptations.

Once a female gets sperm from a male, the fertilization process doesn’t happen immediately, she only uses the sperm when she’s ready to lay her eggs. This delay gives another male the opportunity to swoop out the previous partners sperm and replace it with his own. In order to stop this, the poor little exploding testicle bee’s penis breaks off inside the female sealing off any chance of a competitor removing his sperm.