You Are The Dancing Fly, Young And Spry, Just A Little Guy

Many animals are famous for their extravagant courtship dances. Consider the male Costa's hummingbird, who hovers in front of potential mates with his violet mantle feathers outstretched in the shape of a baby octopus. Or the male greater sage-grouse, who pops his colorful air sacs in a display that seems far less suitable for work than it is. It's not just birds. A flamboyantly colored male peacock spider dances for his life, waving his long legs and shaking his vibrant fan not just to impress a mate, but to dissuade her from eating him. And yet some of the planet's least seductive creatures have dances of their own. Many flies have courtship dances, moves that have gone unnoticed in popular culture because of their vanishing size or pestiferous reputation. But these dances are marvelously complex and quite beautiful, if you only get a chance to look. In a new paper published in Behavioral Ecology, a group of scientists discuss the surprisingly sophisticated courtship dances of the dancing dune fly Apotropina ornatipennis, whose males gallivant around sandy beaches in Australia dancing desperately in search of sex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElNbhK9Tqb8