SUDDENLY, EVOLUTION LOOKS MORE ATTRACTIVE.

Zeus bug is ultimate male chauvinist (Reuters, 7/24/03)

As life goes, it doesn't get much better than for male Zeus bugs. The tiny water bugs that are common along Australia's east coast have an easy life. Their female partners provide free food, transport and unlimited sex whenever they want it.

'All the advantages in this relationship seem to fall to the male with no obvious advantage for the female, yet the female Zeus bug seems a willing partner in this one-sided affair,' Mark Elgar of the University of Melbourne in Australia said. . . .

The male Zeus bug is half the size of the female and hitches a piggy back ride on the female which also feeds him.
'The male can ride the female, feeding and mating for up to a week,' said Elgar, who reported his findings in the August 24 edition of the science journal Nature.

We've all known couples like this. Posted by David Cohen at July 24, 2003 1:13 PM