Must-Read: Creepy Mating Rituals of Nature

We speak a whole lot about dating on this site, but what are we really talking about people? It’s just not advice on how a man should approach a woman, what qualities he needs to show off in order for her to show interest in him (be it

Mating Rituals!

fashion, the fact that he is a good earner, has a toned-out physique or, what, is fluent in the top five movies of hot actresses?), and what to do if that one doesn’t work out. It’s all, when you break it down, simply mating rituals! Which is why our eye was caught by this little gem over at Cracked.com going through the 7 sleaziest mating rituals in the animal kingdom. To paraphrase the horribly shitty and much-overplayed song by The Bloodhound Gang, we’re all animals folks!

This, easily, is our favorite:

#5. Water Striders Use Predators as Wingmen

See, a natural enemy of the water strider is its own close cousin the backswimmer, an insect that spends all of its time hanging upside-down from the other side of the water’s surface tension. If a female strider won’t open the back door, a persistent male will strum the water in just the right way to grab the attention of backswimmers, basically splashing around like an idiot until she has to choose between shutting him up with sex or getting eaten by her mirror-world doppelganger.

Keep in mind, the male is on top, so he’d be protected from the predator approaching from below. He can basically wait there all day, with the female’s choice to either let him have his way or get eaten. Though it’d have to be a pretty big ego bruise for the males every time a female chooses the latter.

Amazing. Does that somehow symbolically figure into how we approach women, by giving them a better option than the horrible, dirty, Ed Hardy-wearing assholes who are scattered throughout bars? Perhaps! Take a gander at the rest and let us know in the comments below how they reflect our own male-to-female dating rituals. See! We’re learning!