A male fly looking to mate often brings a female a gift such as a tasty bug. While the female eats, the male takes care of business. However, a new study by biologists at the University of Western Australia posits that some male flies trick their mates with fake gifts like seed tufts or leaves. From an Animal Planet article about the study:
(Researcher Natasha) LeBas explained that cheating with token goodies does not hurt the species overall, but instead reveals the battle between the sexes over how much males and females wish to invest in reproduction.
"Each sex wants to invest less and wants the other sex to invest more," LeBas told Animal Planet News. "This study is an example of a species in which males who invest a lot, by giving nutritious gifts, seem to have a successful way of investing less, by giving tokens, because females seem to take some time to give up trying to feed from the token."
