A rooster whose pre-dawn cock-a-doodle-doo upset a neighbouring couple will be able to continue his crowing after a French judge today threw out a court case hanging over him.

The judge, in the eastern town of Gap, upheld a lower court's verdict that the fowl -- a living representative of France's national symbol -- was just doing what he was meant to do and the couple had no right to demand he be removed.

They were ordered to pay legal costs.

The two plaintiffs, who in 1999 moved into a rural house right next to a chicken farm that had been there for more than a decade, had complained that the rooster had given them insomnia with its crowing at 4am.

The rooster's owner, Eric Villiot, told AFP that the judgment was a victory for animal-breeders across the country who had problems with neighbours -- a phenomenon that has increased with the trend of city-dwellers buying second homes in France's countryside.
As for his loudmouthed bird, he said: "I am going to let my rooster die a natural death."

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Copulating cockerels show "unprecedented sophistication" in the way they dole out their sperm, suggests a new study.  The findings by Swedish and British researchers challenge the view that males use a straightforward reproduction strategy to simply mate with as many females as possible.

Male fowl devote considerably more sperm to their first encounter with a new mate than with a familiar one, the study reveals. They will also increase the sperm delivered if rival males are around. And an attractive hen - with a large comb adorning her head - will receive more sperm than a less attractive female.  "We tested the idea that male fowl allocate sperm differently according to the quality of copulation," says Tommaso Pizzari, an evolutionary biologist now at the University of Leeds, who led the study.

In promiscuous species - and most are - males not only compete with each other for mates, but sperm from different males may compete after copulation to fertilise the eggs of a single female.  "The male that inseminates more sperm into the female is more likely to achieve fertilisation," Pizzari told New Scientist. "Like a lottery, the more tickets a male buys, the more likely he is to win fertilisation." Simple ideas about male reproductive strategies are not adequate, he says: "Their reproductive behaviour is extremely sophisticated and quite complex."

"It shows males are very sophisticated in the way they spend their precious sperm," agrees Matthew Gage, at the University of East Anglia. "We are getting more and more information that sperm are not as cost-free as previously supposed." He notes that human sperm take 72 days to make. And other studies have shown that inactive adders actually lose weight over time due to the metabolic cost of sperm production.

Pizzari and his colleagues examined how feral male fowl (Gallus gallus) allocated their sperm in different scenarios after two days of sexual abstinence. Females were fitted with a special harness to collect the fresh ejaculate.

In the presence of other males, the copulating male upped the quota of sperm. But this response is "very strongly status specific" says Pizzari. 

Dominant males keep increasing their sperm, however many other males come along. Less dominant cockerels increased their ejaculate if there was one more male on the scene, but if any more were present they would "bow out and conserve their sperm" notes Gage.

A new partner also piqued sexual interest and the amount of sperm from the males. With one female, the male becomes progressively less interested and his ejaculate volume goes down almost exponentially with each consecutive mating, says Pizzari.

After about 20 copulations, the team assumed the male's "half-hearted" mountings were because it had run out of sperm. But when presented with a completely new female, their sexual interest "miraculously resuscitated", he says.And contrary to conventional views, the female's sexual adornments did matter. Females with bigger combs tend to be reproductively superior to other hens, producing more eggs with more yolk. Males preferentially choose to mate with these hens when given the choice, but they confirmed this preference by also investing more sperm.Journal reference: Nature (vol 426, p 70) 
Shaoni Bhattacharya