animal media

Weedy seadragons engaging in their elaborate mating ritual. Screenshot from BBC video below.
The weedy seadragon partakes in an intimate dance while mating. Though usually very cryptic creatures, while vying for a mate, both sexes will engage in elaborate courtship dances, mirroring each others' movements, in order to reproduce. It is overall the females who compete for the males, and so the females engage in the most competitive displays. Like other seahorses and pipe fish, the male sea dragon carries the eggs to term.
Sources:
BBC One, Life, “Weedy Seadragons Dance into the Night.” YouTube. Accessed October 23, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MKkr_1Kqcw.
Rosenqvist, G. and Berglund, A. (2011), Sexual signals and mating patterns in Syngnathidae. Journal of Fish Biology, 78: 1647-1661. https://doi-org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.1111/j.1095-8649.2011.02972.x
"Most syngnathids have more or less elaborate courtship displays, when body size and other ornaments are shown to potential partners and rivals. These are risky behaviours in an otherwise extremely cryptic group of animals (Berglund, 1993), characterized by a low-profile life style except during breeding. This temporary abolishment of crypsis suggests that mate assessment and mating competition are important to fitness in syngnathids. Courtship in S. typhle may serve as a rather typical example of mate attraction in many syngnathids. In nature, males of this species actively inspect and reject females, whereas females vigorously display, often in groups in a lek-like fashion, by swimming up and down above the eelgrass. Males typically swim within the eelgrass, searching for such groups of females. When such a group is encountered, males may choose to dance, and perhaps subsequently mate, with a female (Vincent et al., 1994, 1995). Meanwhile, females compete for the male, and may try to drive other females away from him, thus prolonging the courtship (Vincent et al., 1995), and increasing predation risk (Berglund, 1993; Fuller & Berglund, 1996). The usually long and ritualized mutual dance always precedes copulation. The dance includes wriggling and shaking movements as well as rising above the eelgrass (Fiedler, 1954). The dance may end by copulation, where the female transfers her eggs to the male's brood pouch by means of her ‘penis’. Thereafter the male shakes the eggs down his pouch and then assumes a stiff S-shaped posture while sinking to the bottom, at this point in time fertilizing the eggs (Fiedler, 1954). Males thus have a paternity confidence of 100% (Jones et al., 1999)." (Rosenqvist and Berglund)