Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by CBM (talk | contribs) at 01:25, 9 July 2007 (use better dab template). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

In biology, mating is the pairing of opposite-sex or hermaphroditic internal fertilization animals for copulation and, in social animals, also to raise their offspring. Mating methods include random mating, disassortative mating, assortative mating, or a mating pool.

In some birds, for example, it includes nest-building and feeding offspring. The human practice of making domesticated animals mate and of artificially inseminating them is part of animal husbandry.

Copulation is the union of the sex organs of two sexually reproducing animals for insemination and subsequent internal fertilization. The two individuals may be of opposite sexes or hermaphroditic, as is the case with, for example, snails.

Animals initially lived only in water and reproduced by external fertilization in the water. Certain animals started migrating from oceans to the land during the Late Ordovician epoch about 450 million years ago, necessitating internal fertilization to maintain gametes in a liquid medium.

In insects, the male uses its aedeagus to deposit a capsule of spermatozoa, called a spermatophore, into the female's ovipore.

Many other animals reproduce sexually with external fertilization, including many basal vertebrates. Many vertebrates (such as reptiles and most birds) reproduce with internal fertilization through cloacal copulation (see also hemipenis), while mammals copulate vaginally.

In humans, unlike most animals, copulation may or may not be related to reproduction. In most cases people copulate for pleasure; this behaviour is also seen in some animal species, for example chimpanzees are known to copulate when the female is not fertile, presumably for pleasure, which in turn strengthens social bonds. See also sexual intercourse and human sexual behavior.

See also

External links

• Introduction to Animal Reproduction
• Advantages of Sexual Reproduction

• A pair of lions copulating in the Maasai Mara, Kenya
• Love bugs mating
• Tortoises mating
• Elephants mating Elephants mating
• Dragonflies mating
• Butterflies mating
• Anthomyiidae flies mating

• Biological reproduction
• Sexuality
• Ethology
• Developmental biology
• Mating