Queen bees perform mating flights soon after emerging to collect and store sperm from multiple males, which is then used for reproduction over the queen's lifetime.
Sometimes multiple males will cooperate to help raise a single brood.
Females have been smothered when multiple males tried to mate with them simultaneously in so-called "mobbing" attacks.
In another example Stephen Beckman and Paul Valentine examined the phenomenon of 'partible paternity' in tribes in South America: the belief that babies are made up from the culmination of the spermatozoa of multiple males.
Interestingly, a more recent study has revealed that female sand tiger sharks often have litters sired by multiple males but, as a result of the cannibalism, they can end up with offspring from just one.
Within the group, the females were famously promiscuous around estrus, usually mating multiple times with multiple males and blithely defying efforts by the alpha male or other high-ranker to guard them and keep other males at bay.
There is forbidden love, and multiple males vying for the attention of a seemingly unremarkable heroine, who is, in fact, a princess.
Females may solicit copulations from multiple males and receive sperm one or two times an hour during their 10-day mating period.
(Female flies typically mate with multiple males over a short time period).
Females mate with multiple males, even after pregnancy, and more than one-third of the 75 litters with twin pups had dual paternity.
Sperm from multiple males may compete through this mechanism.
