Absurd Creatures | Behold the Super Weird Face-to-Face Sex of the Springtail

(playful music)

[Narrator] Alright, cut it out.

That's enough horsing around.

Just, just knock it off.

Yes, you as well.

These kind of pissed off looking arthropods

are globular springtails.

And they aren't actually fighting,

they're getting it on.

But, before we get to that,

there are lots of kinds of springtails.

They're called springtails because they've

got an appendage kind of like a tail

that they use to fire themselves out of danger.

Check this out

here in the circle in the upper right.

He he, I'm not sure why that's so funny.

Anyway, the globular springtails.

When a boy globular springtail

and a girl globular springtail love each other very much

they kiss for a long time.

The bigger one here is in fact the female.

The tiny male uses his specially shaped antennae

to hook onto his giant lady's face.

Thus begins their less than graceful first dance.

By waiving him around,

the female's pretty much saying I'll take some sperm please.

He'll deposit that sperm on the ground as a tower

called a spermatophore and guide her on top of it.

Then she'll take up the spermatophore

into her genital aperture as it's known.

So, yeah,

he's essentially a sperm gun she wields with her face.

And, there you have it.

Making babies the old fashioned way

with a sperm gun.

Alright, fine.

Maybe that isn't very old fashioned.