Chickens eject sperm from males they don't fancy
Date: 5.9.2011
Female domestic chickens generally mate with multiple males and are known to sometimes eject sperm following mating encounters.
A team led by Oxford researcher Rebecca Dean investigated the phenomenon in a group of feral chickens kept at Stockholm University in Sweden.
"These results show that promiscuous females can actively bias sperm utilization to exert a strong and predictable influence on the struggle for fertilization," Dean said. By doing so, females "retain control of paternity even in species such as fowl where males can force mating."
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