When no females are around , male Japanese termites pair up to make homosexual nests together , new enquiry has revealed . However , while these civic partnerships can be happily maintained for long periods of time , if given the chance these merry termites will readily kill a heterosexual male for copulate with his spouse .
Same - sex courtshiphas been observed in a telephone number of animal coinage , although the reasons behind this are poorly empathize , given that this type of behavior would seem to be detrimental to the selection of a species . However , write in the journalAnimal Behaviour , the bailiwick authors report that forming all - male couple in reality brings a act ofsurvival benefitsto termites .
When conducting their experiments , the researchers placed male termite together in makeshift colony under science laboratory conditions , noticing that once they see no females were available , they promptly formed all - male couples , settling down to nestle together .
Explaining this behavior in astatement , field co - writer Nobuaki Mizumoto enunciate that “ manly termite are n’t able-bodied to pull through on their own , but those that make nest with another male survived for much longer . ” This , he says , is partly down to the fact that search for female places manlike termite in danger of being catch by predators , and partly because single termites are ineffectual to groom themselves and involve a married person to keep them clear and free of rot wood , which can be damaging to their wellness .
However , when the researcher placed all - male colonies in close proximity to mixed - sex colonies , they found that the two sometimes became connected as the insects tunneled towards each other . When this pass , male person in homosexual twosome regularly kill heterosexual males and mated with their partners . However , only one male person from a jolly twain was capable to mate with this stolen female person , indicating that the homosexual unions broke down as soon as females became available .
In other words , as Mizumoto explains , “ couple with another male person is n’t the good option , but it gives mateless termites a luck to outlast until they happen a female , if that materialize at all . ”
