Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers: & Other Unusual Relationships »

Marty Crump is a behavioral ecologist who has worked with tropical amphibians in the areas of parental care, reproduction, territoriality, cannibalism, and tadpole ecology. An adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, she is the author of In Search of the Golden Frog and Headless Males Make Great Lovers, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Vampire bats that regurgitate blood for roosting buddies. Mosquitoes that filch honeydew droplets from ants. Reptiles that enforce chastity on their lovers with copulatory plugs. Capuchin monkeys that use millipede secretions as mosquito repellent. The natural world is full of unusual relationships, and negotiation between life-forms striving to survive is evolution at its most diverse, entertaining, and awe-inspiring. 

Picking up where her highly popular Headless Males Make Great Lovers left off, tropical field biologist Marty Crump takes us on another voyage of discovery into the world of unusual natural histories, this time focusing on extraordinary interactions involving animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships illuminates the ceaseless give-and-take between species. Occasionally, both interacting parties benefit, like when hornbills and dwarf mongooses hunt together for food. Other times, like when mites ride in hummingbirds’ nostrils to reach their next meal of nectar, one individual benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed. But sometimes one individual benefits at the expense of the other; you need only recall your last sinus infection to understand how that works.

Throughout, Crump brings her trademark spunk and zest to these stories of intimate exchange. She introduces readers to penguins that babysit, pseudoscorpions that ride and mate under the wings of giant harlequin beetles, and parasitic fungi that bend insects to their will. A lively companion to Crump’s earlier work, Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships captures the bizarre and befuddling aspects of the behavior of animals, plants, and microbes. After this entertaining romp through the world of natural relationships, you’ll never look at an orchid the same way again.

New Scientist

"Vastly enjoyable."—Adrian Barnett, New Scientist

— Adrian Barnett

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 · Whatever Happened to Baby Booby?

& Other Interactions among Animals of the Same Kind

Not Tonight, Honey

To Have and to Hold

You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours

Bubble Blowers, Pothole Plugs, and Other Group Hunting Roles

The Babysitters’ Club

Sound the Alarm!

An Intimate Act

Whatever Happened to Baby Booby?

2 · Taken to the Cleaners,

& Other Interactions between Animal Species

Hunting Partners

Taken to the Cleaners

She’s Got a Ticket to Ride

Houseguests, Unlike Dead Fish, Don’t Always Smell in Three Days

Be It Ever So Humble

Raising the Devil’s Spawn

Defense Contracts

Cow Pie No. 5

Audacious Pirates and Sneaky Burglars

3 · Green, Green Plants of Home,

& Other Interactions between Animals and Plants

Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers, and Other Orchid Contrivances

A Seedy Neighborhood

The Green, Green Plants of Home

Powerful Plant Products

There’s the Rub

Ants and Plants

4 · Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

& Other Interactions with Fungi and Bacteria

Intestinal Microbes and the Gas We Pass

Deadly Dragon Drool

Mighty Mushrooms and Other Good Fungus among Us

Bombarded by Bacteria

A Cloak of Antibiotics

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers Revisited

Conserve Interactions, Not Just Species

Glossary

References Consulted and Suggested Reading

Index