So considering how complicated it can be to find a mate and then mate with it, why bother?

Why have sex at all if it's possible to skip it?

And why does animal nooky get so weird and dangerous? Sexual reproduction has a key evolutionary advantage over the asexual variety.

The offspring of any particular couple necessarily vary—consider how much you differ from your siblings.

She burrows into a wasp and pokes her oviduct through its exoskeleton, and the male comes along and fertilizes her.

As the kids grow, they devour their mother from the inside out and erupt from the host.

This is because it's tremendously costly for females to not only produce the eggs, but in the case of mammals, to schlep the young around in their bellies.

Sure, sexual reproducers sometimes forfeit limbs or even their lives in the process. Makes that one weird sex trick you do seem pretty prosaic, though, doesn't it?

Females also have to be careful when choosing a mate because they want to ensure their kids get good, strong genes.

This leads to conflict, such as female ducks evolving that corkscrew vagina.

Such are the eccentricities of making whoopee in the animal kingdom.

Sex is weird because sometimes it to be—it's the price we pay for subscribing to this mode of reproduction.