• What Females Want and Males Will Do, 8-9 p.m. Sunday. WPBT-PBS 2
The main question raised by What Females Want and Males Will Do, a documentary on mating rituals in the animal world that airs Sunday as part of the PBS series Nature, is this: How do biologists ever reproduce? As a species, they seem dimmer, weirder and far more sinister than any of the slithering lizards or howling baboons they study.
Consider Gail Patricelli, a University of California-Davis researcher who has spent years in the brush studying the sexual impulses of the sage grouse. Her conclusion: ''The males are not that picky about who they spend time courting. We often see males on the [prairie] trying to mate with cow pies.'' Somebody unhobbled by an advanced degree in biology could have figured that out after observing about 10 minutes of a South Beach Saturday night.
Then there's Chadden Hunter, an Australian biologist who spends his time with infrared cameras hoping to catch a glimpse of Ethiopian Gelada baboons boinking. (Gelada males are definitely wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am guys.) One segment of What Females Want follows Hunter as he treks around behind his favorite Gelada waiting for a stool sample to check hormone levels. ''This is the boring part of the job, waiting for a monkey to poop,'' Hunter complains. Ummm . . . as opposed to what happens after?
Quite aside from confirming all your worst suspicions about your high school biology teacher, What Females Want (which airs in two parts on consecutive Sundays) is a highly entertaining piece of work that allows you to cloak your sleaziest voyeuristic instincts in high-minded erudition. If your co-workers catch you in the break room peering closely at cockroaches getting it on, they'd have you arrested; but watch it on What Females Want and it's Science.
By the way, that example is not hypothetical. Cockroaches. Spiders. Snakes. Lizards. Bats. Elephants. They're all seen doing it, especially the females. It turns out animal chicks are kind of slutty, moving in with mates who bring home the bacon or grub worms or whatever, but then hooking up with any random stranger who flashes some hot plumage. One DNA study found that among red foxes, previously thought to be monogamous, 80 percent of the cubs are the result of female infidelity. ''There's a lot of cheating going on,'' concedes Rebecca Safran, a University of Colorado biologist.
Safran herself is more of a specialist in barn swallows, even using magic markers to give some of the male birds exotic markings to see if it helps them score. (It does, another conclusion easily deduced from the profusion of gold chains on display in Coconut Grove clubs at any given moment.) That's one of any number of sexual deceptions fostered by female biologists during the documentary, from altering the spots on butterfly wings to construction of a mechanized fembot sage grouse. Reminder to self: Never go to a biologist singles bar.
