{"id":719032,"date":"2026-07-30T12:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T12:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/719032\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T12:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T12:22:08","slug":"its-the-only-known-example-of-necrophilia-having-an-evolutionary-advantage-to-both-the-male-and-the-unfortunate-female","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/719032\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s the only known example of necrophilia having an evolutionary advantage &#8211; to both the male and the unfortunate female\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nature is never a good place to look for moral guidance. Anything goes, as long as it increases the chances of one&#8217;s genes being passed down the generations. Take the male Amazonian frog Rhinella proboscidea &#8211; it doesn&#8217;t even care whether its mates are alive or dead.<\/p>\n<p>Like many amphibians, the species is an explosive breeder. Males gather in huge numbers at spawning sites during the brief, desperate mating season, battling among themselves for access to females.<\/p>\n<p>Some females inevitably perish in the scrum, yet they are still fair game: by mounting a dead partner and then massaging her abdomen with his legs, a male can squeeze out her cargo of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/do-eggs-really-need-sperm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">eggs<\/a> and fertilise them in the usual way.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the only known example of necrophilia having an evolutionary advantage &#8211; to both the male and the unfortunate female, who would otherwise have missed out on breeding entirely<\/p>\n<p>Discover more fascinating frog facts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nature is never a good place to look for moral guidance. Anything goes, as long as it increases&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-719032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}