The Mating Game: Three animals with challenging first dates

Asking someone on a first date is a rite of passage likely to make many of us feel nervous.

And if we humans think it’s tough enough plucking up the courage to make the first move, spare a thought for our friends in the animal kingdom.

In The Mating Game, a new BBC One natural history documentary series, Sir David Attenborough narrates the different struggles creatures go through to attract that special someone. As you’ll see in the examples below, from flamboyant feather dancing to spending days assessing each other’s suitability - romance can be very hard work.

You’d better work hard to impress an ostrich

It can be tough for a young male ostrich who fancies finding himself a girlfriend as there are strict rules in their herds over who can make a first move. Basically, if you’re not the head male, you need to know your place and stay single for longer than you’d like.

But as The Mating Game shows, there are some brave ostriches prepared to take the risk. They will challenge the leadership of a male who has claims on the territory and all the females associated with it. In this case, it doesn’t work, so our lovelorn ostrich finds himself an outcast, having to start from scratch out in the open plains of Namibia in south-west Africa.

Like a young rebel in a teenage romance, he’s not without admirers for long. An ostrich is able to inflate a sac in their throat which emits a powerful sound - so strong it can travel for several kilometres - and hopefully be answered by some unattached females. Female ostriches aren’t single through choice, however - they just have incredibly high standards. For a male to make the grade, it helps if they can display impressive pink shins and shiny black feathers, but the deal breaker is a test of stamina as they encourage the male to keep up with them in chase across the plains that can reach speeds of 70kmh (around 43mph).

The male has one more romantic trick up his sleeve. After keeping up with the female on the chase, he then demonstrates something which can only be described as a courtship dance, splaying his feathers out and attempting some moves in the hope it will make his potential date’s wings flick - a sure sign that a female is interested.

It took being thrown out of his herd, shouting across the plains, a hectic chase and, finally, a heartfelt dance for our boy to finally find a mate. That’s an EastEnders storyline if ever we heard one.

Seahorses (properly) love each other

Finding a partner can be a romantic pastime for animals of all shapes and sizes. They have to get it right, especially if they stick to that one soulmate for the rest of their life.

When seahorses go on the lookout for love, they don’t rush things. A female and male who think they have what it takes to go the distance will spend days at each other’s side, copying one another’s moves in a mirror image.

Once they’re inseparable, one of nature’s most unusual acts of reproduction takes place as the male hosts and fertilises the female’s eggs, becoming pregnant for around three weeks. He will give birth to around 300 live young - not from an egg, as many other sea creatures do, but releasing them from his abdomen, fully-formed and into the water - each of them around 1cm long.

The infant seahorses will spend their first few weeks hiding safely in the seaweed, while dad has a rest and mum prepares her next batch of eggs. Then the circle of life continues - hopefully dad has a copy of The Lion King tucked away to watch while he’s resting up.

Never move in on a hellbenders’ den

When you’re as rare as a hellbender is, the mating season becomes very important indeed.

A type of salamander, the hellbender has skin which resembles granite, making it the perfect camouflage to hide in the rocks below the freshwater of North America’s Appalachian Mountains.

They may look fierce, but hellbenders are really rather shy. They only pop their heads back out into their watery world when autumn first arrives, and the rivers where they live flow more strongly.

In the example seen on The Mating Game, a male hellbender isn’t always interested in the reproduction side of finding an other half. Sometimes, it’s about giving them a secure place to stay.

The space below his rock is an ideal place for females to leave their eggs. He knows they are swimming upstream to reach him, so he has to fight off any other males who want to sneak into his den and claim it for themselves. When he eventually greets his new mate with what is known in hellbender circles as a courtship kiss, they settle in while the female lays her eggs. Curiously, this is also a cue for other hellbenders, male and female, to join the pair in their new den. Nobody quite knows why the rules of the den are suddenly relaxed in this way but it does mean that more eggs can be safely stored there in a communal collection.

The male who set up the den now becomes a babysitter for the eggs. Fully available for childcare, he may even be up for delivering the hellbender equivalent of a bedtime story.

The Mating Game begins on BBC One on Sunday 3 October. You can also catch up on BBC iPlayer.