All in the Family
For some animals, the ideal mate is a brother, sister or cousin
In late March, as winter unclenches its frigid grip on upstate New York, a spotted salamander’s thoughts turn fleetingly to love. After early spring rains soak the forests where the salamanders live, thousands of the slimy little creatures descend on small vernal pools for the amphibian equivalent of an orgy.
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“It’s sort of a frenzy,” says Kelly Zamudio, an ecologist at Cornell University who studies the five-day ritual. “All these males are competing with each other and nudging each other and putting down sperm as quickly as they can.”