A mandrill lets it all hang out in brilliant hues, but other creatures prefer a subtler approach. Toads whistle, elks bugle and the dreamer fish latches onto his mate until death does them part -- and it ain't pretty.

The Royal B.C. Museum is taking love in the wild far past the birds and the bees, putting more than 100 courtship rituals of the animal kingdom on display from Oct. 5 to Jan. 7.

Curator Gavin Hanke lets the moose antlers do the talking. Territorial male moose fighting for female attention sometimes lock horns, can't unlock them and starve to death still entangled. Talk about pining away. Hanke has the horns to prove it, with nicely cleaned skulls attached. Even when they survive sex, moose have their own thrilling form of foreplay: They love to roll in pheromone-rich urine to show prospective mates they're keen.

Don't worry, moms and dads. There won't be any live sex shows. By and large, the exhibit focuses on the signals creatures send out to the opposite sex, not the act of mating.

Displays will be interactive, mounted -- including a full-size moose -- models or videos. The simulated sensuality is sometimes quirky, sometimes quaint, but just like real life, lots of buttons will be there to be pushed.

Take the super-sized, motorized Roman snail. "When you hug the snail, it gives you a jab in the belly with a love dart," says Hanke. That's brazen behaviour, considering it's a hermaphrodite. At the Canadian Museum of Nature, where the exhibit recently ended, the love dart wore out more than once, thanks to touchy-feely visitors.

"You get to pretend you're a peacock and choose what your tail shape is like and whether females find that appealing or not,'' Hanke adds. People can even pretend to be a mosquito and try out their buzz with the opposite sex.

He calls the exhibit educational eye candy. And even though Victoria is "fairly conservative,'' he anticipates only a couple of snippets parents might want to keep in mind: The pigs and their makin' bacon video and the mirror that catches the brightly coloured genitals of the mandrill. Most kids might not even notice unless they catch the reflection in the mirror just right.

Europeans would find it strange that anyone would raise eyebrows at the subject matter, and there were only a couple of brushes with "sensitivity'' at the Canadian Museum of Nature, says its spokeswoman, Liz McCrea.

"Human mating systems are so placid by comparison,'' he notes. A date who lacks appeal doesn't get another date. In the feathered and furry realm, the risk is far greater.

A brightly plumed bird singing to his lady love could easily become lunch for a falcon. The giant Pacific octopus sometimes skips the foreplay to nibble his lady love to death.

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