Ann Jones

Nothing.

Nothing is the answer.

She doesn't change her behaviours post mating, she doesn't protein load, she sleeps as normal and she'll happily mate again.

The proteins in the semen essentially direct the female body to become the perfect mother.

Stay with me, friends.

I promise it does get better.

Now that I know how many ways that sperm can have an effect on an organism, I am never having sex again.

Well, never say never.

I don't like being manipulated, all right?

So before you, like I, have fallen into a pit of reproductive equal opportunity despair, the female also has a drive to reproduce, speaking theoretically, not personally.

So is all this manipulation going on warfare?

Or is it a cooperative move towards successful reproduction?

The physics of the way sperm moves and interacts with these chutes means that the grooves sort of suck in the liquid, and once the sperm is in there, it sort of motors along and it doesn't exit.

It's a specialised ski lift specifically for sperm.

And that doesn't sound like warfare, does it?

It sounds like a posh person's holiday.

And above that microscopic level, is there cooperation in some of the things that just seem absolutely nonsensical in the natural world?

Remember the alpacas?

The spitting, ear-lashing, fibre-producing tall sheep from the start of the show?

How the male alpaca has a long penis with a hook on it that goes in like a post-hole digger and scrapes out the female reproductive tract?