Wild Love: Public Displays of Affection in Nature

When spring has sprung, nature isn’t shy about showing off how wild love blossoms among flora and fauna alike in mating calls, dances, and rituals that can be found everywhere during the season.

Liana Vitali, a naturalist and educator at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Maryland, offers a tasteful look into the world of animal and plant romance. In stories of fascinating courtship and reproduction strategies from near and far, Vitali celebrates the signs of spring attraction found in aerial displays by the American woodcock, underwater sperm transfers between salamanders, and trickery among male nursery spiders designed to win female hearts, to name just a few of the ways the natural world keeps buzzing.

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