London, February 21 (ANI): Female Hottentot golden moles use the size of male golden moles' penises to gauge the attractiveness of their mate, scientists have discovered.
According to the scientists, who published their finding in the journal Mammalian Biology, a long penis makes a male mole more attractive and raises his chances of fathering offspring, the BBC reported.
Hottentot golden moles (Amblysomus hottentotus) are a group of small, blind, highly specialised mammals commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa. They live underground in networks of specially dug tunnels, feeding on earthworms and the larvae and grubs of invertebrates such as insects.
They are solitary and polygamous, mating at any opportunity. Females reproduce all year round, giving birth to litters of one to three babies.
Prof Nigel Bennett, Tarryn Retief and Dr Bill Bateman of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, suspected that the animals rely on smell and touch to find and gauge the attractiveness of partners.
To investigate in more detail they examined the body measurements of male golden moles.
Their study revealed that male Hottentot golden moles actually have very small penises, ranging from 1.2 to 2.5mm long. The animals themselves are between 74 and 97mm long.
"They probably have one of the smaller penises per length of body in the animal kingdom," said Prof Bennett.
They the researchers found that penis size varies significantly in male Hottentot golden moles. Crucially the size of the penis varies much more than other body dimensions, including body length and testes size.
That is a strong sign that penis length is a sexually selected trait in Hottentot golden moles, with females preferring males with longer genitalia.
From the female perspective, attractive males are those, which are able to invest heavily in certain traits, such as brains, muscles, foraging ability or penis size.
"So females can use penis size as a measure of how good - how high quality - the males are," Dr Bateman told BBC Nature.
Penis size may be a useful trait in environments, such as dark underground tunnels, where females cannot spot other attractive traits.
"We think that penis size matters for these essentially solitary, more or less blind, underground dwellers. Judging penis size when mating may be one of the only criteria they have available to them," explained Dr Bateman.
"The mating is probably pretty rough and ready, and unromantic to say the least, so a physical assessment of a penis in situ, as it were, may allow females to reject males," he added.
The scientists speculate that other animals in dark environments, such as bats in caves or seals living in murky waters, might also use penis size as a guide to select suitable mates. (ANI)
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