Not sleeping to have sex: the habit that is killing an endangered species of marsupials in Australia

Northern quolls, tiny Australian marsupials, are giving up sleep to have as much sex as possible.

But this habit is ending their lives, according to research conducted by the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of Queensland in Australia.

“The males will search everywhere for as many females as they can and it seems that their drive is so strong that they forego sleep to give themselves more time to search,” Christofer Clemente, a co-author of the study and a professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, comments by email. .

The lack of rest explains why the males of these carnivorous animals —with the appearance of a rodent, although in Australia and New Guinea they are often called marsupial cats— only live one year: “They usually mate to death in their breeding season, between July and August.

The females, on the other hand, can live and reproduce between three and four years”, continues the professor.

The experts who have developed this study, including Clemente, believe that this way of reproducing is part of their natural cycle.

The researchers placed trackers on these animals for 42 days on Groote Eylandt, an island off the coast of northern Australia.

The quolls (of the genus

) they chose for the study were wild males and females.

The experts concluded that these Australian animals travel great distances to mate as often as possible.

“Two males, whom we named Moimoi and Cayless, moved between 10.4 and 9.4 kilometers in one night, respectively.

A human distance equivalent to 40 kilometers, based on the average stride length”, explains the Australian Clemente to this newspaper.

They are capable of walking almost a marathon to achieve their reproductive purposes.

Males in this wild pursuit of mating increase the risk of death.

"Sleep deprivation and associated symptoms for a prolonged period make recovery impossible and this could explain the deaths of the animals after the breeding season," says the study's lead author, Joshua Gaschk.

They spend less time grooming, which attracts more parasites, and they neglect their basic needs such as finding food or avoiding danger from lurking predators.

“They become easy prey, unable to avoid vehicle collisions or just dying of exhaustion,” adds Gaschk.

And he points out that this species is an excellent model to study "the effects of sleep deprivation on bodily function."

These cousins ​​of the Tasmanian devil have been included in the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature since June 2015 and according to data from the Australian Government, the population of northern

fell by 95% between the 1980s and 2010s.

Unfortunately, after all the effort, the offspring of these marsupials do not have it so easy.

Females are capable of giving birth to up to 18 young, but since they only have six teats to feed them, only a third of them will survive, according to Eric Montes, a biologist at denanimals.com.

Added to this is habitat loss due to human development and attacks by feral cats and dogs, which pose a serious threat.

They are also particularly vulnerable to cane toad poisoning.

There are about 100,000

northern quolls, but the population has been "experiencing a rapid decline," according to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

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