The quoll is a cat-sized marsupial found in Australia and New Guinea. But don't let its adorable size deceive you: this critter loves to fuck. Or at least, the males do. In fact, male quolls are so fucking horny that it's literally killing them, according to one recent study published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science. From the abstract:
Male northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus) are the largest known mammal to experience a post-breeding die-off; however, the cause of their death is unknown, dissimilar from causes in other semelparous dasyurids.
[…]
Northern quolls were captured on Groote Eylandt off the coast of the Northern Territory, Australia, and were fitted with accelerometers. A machine learning algorithm (Self-organizing Map) was trained on more than 76 h of recorded footage of quoll behaviours and used to predict behaviours in 42 days of data from wild roaming quolls (7M : 6F). Male northern quolls were more active (male 1.27 g, s.d. = 0.41; female 1.18 g, s.d. = 0.36), spent more time walking (13.09% male: 8.93% female) and engaged in less lying/resting behaviour than female northern quolls (7.67% male: 23.65% female). Reduced resting behaviour among males could explain the post-breeding death as the deterioration in appearance reflects that reported for sleep-deprived rodents.
In other words: male northern quolls are traveling so far for sex that they're barely even sleeping, turning these somnambulant sex beasts into necrophilic nesters. Which is also why they look kinda sleazy. They are literally so hyperfocused on fucking that they aren't taking care of themselves — which in turn makes it even harder for them to get laid. Apparently the ladies don't like them showing up sleep-deprived at 3am, banging down the door for a quickie.
NBC News broke this down pretty well:
One male quoll, which researchers named Moimoi, walked 6.5 miles in one night in search of a mate — a distance equivalent to an average-size human walking up to 24 miles [on two hours of sleep], researchers said.
Joshua Gaschk, who led the study, said in a statement: "Sleep deprivation, and associated symptoms for a prolonged duration would make recuperation impossible and could explain the causes of death recorded in the males after breeding season.
"They become easy prey, are unable to avoid vehicle collisions, or simply die from exhaustion."
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The health risks of sleep deprivation in rodents is well documented, and the quolls the researchers studied were found to lose weight, become aggressive and display reckless behavior.
To make finding a partner even more troublesome, male quolls' appearance suffers and they attract an increased number of parasites due to a lack of grooming, the study found.
I don't know who needs to hear this but if you're literally killing yourself to get laid — it's not worth it, dude.
Resting disparity in quoll semelparity: examining the sex-linked behaviours of wild roaming northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus) during breeding season [Joshua L. Gaschk , Kaylah Del Simone , Robbie S. Wilson and Christofer J. Clemente / Royal Society Open Science]
Furious marsupial so thirsty for sex that it's dying, scientists warn [Maggie Harrison / Futurism]
'Live fast, die young': An endangered marsupial may be mating itself to death [Patrick Smith / NBC News]
