Chasing Females Sends Males To An Early Grave

Wired:

Again and again across the animal kingdom, males die younger than females — a consistent, puzzling pattern of premature expiration that new research suggests may be the unavoidable biological cost of impressing the ladies.

An emblematic example of the trade off is seen among houbara bustards, a large Middle Eastern bird with exuberant male courtship displays. Males age faster than females,  and biologists found that exceptionally exuberant males age fastest.

The measure of aging was, appropriately, declining sperm quality.

“It is the males that invest most effort into extravagant sexual display that experience this spermatogenic ‘burn-out’ at an earlier age,” wrote researchers led by biologist Brian Preston of France’s University of Burgundy in an August 1 Ecology Letters paper.

Makes sense to me.  I'll refrain from commenting further.