He’s male, he’s pregnant and she still wants more

I WROTE last week about the battle of the sexes among phalaropes, little wading birds which used to breed in Ireland.

RTÉ screened documentaries recently on Kealan Doyle’s work with seahorses, creatures whose domestic arrangements are even more bizarre.

The phalarope daddy does all the child-rearing but the mammy still shoulders the burden of pregnancy and delivers the eggs. In seahorses, however, even the pregnancy is taken over by the male.