Dancing, singing, and, er, peeing on yourself - it's all part of the playbook if you're a native short-tailed bat looking to get lucky with the ladies.
More than three years of research in a remote North Island forest has revealed, for the first time, the extremely strange mating ritualsof New Zealand's endangered lesser-short tailed bats.
For years, scientists have been unsure whether the tiny subspecies, found only in a handful of places around the country, uses a little-seen mating system whereby males gather near groups of females and put on a colourful range of sexual displays to attract a mate.
A study, published today, confirms they are what are called "lek breeders" - an important finding given only one other bat species in the world belongs to the group. The winged creatures have one of the widest arrays of mating behaviours in mammals.
More interesting still, though, were the quirky antics observed by study author Cory Toth, of Auckland University, and his colleagues.
Using infrared cameras and microchip technology, the team journeyed deep into the bats' habitat in the Pureora Forest in the central North Island to track their patterns.
They watched as single male lesser short-tailed bats first occupied a bachelor pad - that being a tree cavity - within distance of communal roosts where females congregated.
Next, they sang and moved as the female bats flew between the roosts, while also boosting their attractiveness by dousing themselves in their own urine.
Once a bat had lured a female and mated, they left the spot and another male came in, revealing the tree cavities were being used one at a time like a time-share apartment.
"The roost-sharing by males was a complete surprise," Mr Toth said.
"Up to five males take turns occupying a single roost but if another male arrives while one is already in residence, a fight will ensue."
Lek-breeding in mammal or bird species is thought to occur when males cannot monopolise females so resort to producing sexual displays near groups of females, even though this behaviour potentially increases competition.
As well as being important seed dispersers and pollinators in New Zealand old-growth forests, the short-tailed bats' threatened status gave new research an added importance, Mr Toth said.
"While we have confirmed lek-breeding in the lesser short-tailed bat, we need to carry out more work to investigate the roost-sharing by males and other breeding behaviour such as which males receive matings and why."
New Zealand's lesser-short tailed bat singing in a cavity.
Auckland Council biodiversity officer Ben Paris, better known as our "Batman", believed New Zealanders should be as proud of the short-tailed bat as we are of the kiwi.
"Yet most New Zealanders still don't even know we have bats here," he said.
"This research proves that there is still a lot we don't know about our native bats, and it's important to get to know the behaviour of these bats, so we can build conservation and restoration strategies designed to not interrupt this behaviour and allow them to thrive."
The bizarre sex lives of our native species
New research has found New Zealand's lesser short-tailed bats woo the opposite sex by taking up residence in tree cavities at night and singing to females as they travel between nearby communal roosts. If that's not strange enough, they also cover themselves in their own urine to add to their attractions, and share the tree cavities with other bachelors. Yet they aren't the only of our creatures whose mating behaviour is a bit on the stranger side.
•Female tui are known to form socially monogamous relationships, where they will choose one male to breed with, but this doesn't stop them casting their eyes beyond the nest for a better bloke. A study published last year revealed that the rate of tui chicks sired by other birds was 57 per cent, compared with just 11 per cent in other "monogamous" bird species. Other male tui with larger territories, or even bigger tufts, typically meant they were more dominant and could therefore offer their love-chicks better protection.
•Another new piece of research revealed how the parasitic pea crab, found in shellfish, tickle its way into the female's home. Once lured to the female crab's mussel by the pheromones it gave off, the male sat atop the mussel, gently tickling it for hours until became docile enough to open up and let it inside.
•More than two thirds of male New Zealand praying mantises are devoured by South African females after being lured to their doom by an irresistible erotic scent. Lacking the built-in caution that South African males of the species have, researchers found that not only did become they lunch, but were also unable to mate beforehand. This also wasn't good for less-preferred native females, who struggled to find partners.
