"As a young fela I scorned the young males in our tribe—they were overbold and self-satisfied. When I came into my season I made sure to be far away from the clan, so I would not be betrayed by nature into bearing a litter that I did not yet desire. I found that I enjoyed being by myself; enjoyed the solitary way of the hunter."
— Roofshadow, Tailchaser's Song
Many animals have a mating season or an estrous cycle (referred as "going into heat"). Depending on the animal, this can be very messy, smelly, noisy, or (especially when it comes to males in rut) dangerous.
In fiction, mating seasons and estrous cycles are presented as a hindrance to characters but often not depicted realistically. How this is presented depends on whether the character is the one in season or not.
Usually, this trope occurs for dog or cat owners during heat cycles. It's usually depicted as their female pet having gone into heat. The owner doesn't know how to deal with the mess, smell, and/or noise of an animal in heat. If they have a male pet, they'll have to quarantine them. Even if they don't have a male pet, a common gag is male animals (usually stray or free-roaming cats) hanging around their house. Sometimes this occurs with owners of tomcats, where the joke is instead that their cat is always roaming around and looking for mates.
This trope can also appear for animal or animal-like characters, ranging from Partially Civilized Animals, humanoids with animal characteristics, or aliens/monsters. In this case, heat is depicted as a more annoying version of menstruation. The trouble comes from the character's need to breed, as well as oftentimes heat itself being depicted as uncomfortably hot to experience. Mating season is prime humor potential because even normally mellow or sophisticated characters can't avoid their base instincts.
Another common joke is people in the wilderness during mating season. This usually leads to an animal attack due to the high amount of animals in the area.
Compare to My Instincts Are Showing, No Periods, Period, and All Periods Are PMS. Commonly followed by Pregnancy Makes You Crazy, when mating season instincts are replaced by pregnancy instincts.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cat Planet Cuties: When Eris hits her first mating season, it causes her to go even more hyper and sexually suggestive than normal, and she attempts to forcefully kiss not just Kio but also Manami. Dr. Durel ends up being forced to give her an injection to end it early so she doesn't cause any further trouble.
- Interspecies Reviewers discusses this trope on several levels.
- The centaur women from the Transportation guild have issues with going into estrus, so they have a part-time job as succu-girls that they only do when they need to deal with this.
- The Warm Raw Egg is a 'joint' where egglaying females can go to 'put on a show' of laying their unfertilized eggs. The same chapter/episode also shows Meidri having some discomfort as her time to lay unfertilized eggs popped up, thus inspiring the Reviewers to visit the Warm Raw Egg.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Chapter 81 deals with Ilulu going into heat and attempting to force herself onto Kobayashi. Tohru's attempts to tire her out with a sparring match fail, as Ilulu simply goes onto her instead.
- Monster Musume: It seems the full moon is the time for most liminals to go into heat, as their libidos get kicked into overdrive whenever it comes around. Poor Kimihito has to deal with Miia, Papi and Centorea going completely crazy on him. The hapless young man notes that the three would likely kill him in a foursome, so he spends all night avoiding them. Once it's all over, he wearily notes that everyone will be having an early curfew on full moon nights going forward.
- Pokémon: The Original Series: "Forest Grumps" revolves around the gang being attacked by angry Ursaring during mating season.
- Seton Academy: Join the Pack!: Ranka Okami the wolf-girl goes into heat and causes no shortage of trouble for Jin Mazama, asking him to mate with her while he's begrudgingly looking after her. Instead he breaks her heart by sneering that he hates her, though he wasn't being truthful.
Comic Books
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: While visiting Dr. Moreau, the heroes encounter a bear-man hybrid, and learn that he has violent sexual instincts which are calmed by sending him to an old gypsy woman. Not to calm him with drugs or potions, but to have sex with her until his aggression drops.
Comic Strips
- Footrot Flats: Multiple arcs deal with the antics of the Dog (and the other dogs) trying to get to Jess when she's in heat. Her owner Cooch Windgrass has to lock her up in the Bitches Box, basically a kennel on stilts.
Fan Works
- Always the Quiet Ones👁 Image
is about a chaotic Seeker heat cycle in the Decepticon ranks. Male Seekers become aggressive and territorial, leading the otherwise sane Thundercracker to savagely attack any male who approaches his mates Skywarp and Starscream... and Starscream and Skywarp to flirt with other males so they can watch his jealous courtship displays. Thundercracker winds up killing Megatron when the latter threatens his mates and offspring. Nobody contests his claim as Supreme Ruler of the Decepticons, since he'd personally beaten every male in the ranks at least once.Soundwave: Seeker trines: Result of Procreation imperative. Ability to breed: Cyclical. Carriers receptivity causes increased aggression in mech Seekers to prevent theft of femmes by other mechs. - Chemistry: Played for Drama. If Cadance doesn't take her medication, she enters a heat-like state which is very uncomfortable and hard to temper.
- Craving the Sky: A famous study determined that faunus women do indeed have mating cycles and go into heat. Except later, another study with a human control group determined that these "mating cycles" are no different from the menstrual cycles of human women. The first doctor was just a racist trying to justify treating faunus as animals.
Blake: He essentially spent five thousand lien in grants proving that faunus get periods. I don't understand how he isn't a complete laughing stock.
- Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl has a variant. Technically, centaurs don't have a mating season. Biologically, they are capable of sex at any time and their interests don't wax and wane. However, in the modern era centaur reproduction requires certain special arrangements to be made, arrangements complicated and risky enough that they are only used once a year, during a few nights in the spring.
- From Behind Bars: The zoo keepers introduce a female in heat to Mufasa and Scar in hopes that they'll have cubs. This annoys Mufasa because he has difficulties staying faithful to his mate Sarabi, who is still back home in Africa.
- Heat👁 Image
is a Naruto fanfic where Naruto (a boy) has been having heat cycles since he was six due to the Nine-Tailed Fox (who is also male) being trapped inside him. He finds them annoying but usually secludes himself until they're finished. Now that he's sixteen, however, he's having trouble dealing with his attraction to Hinata during heat. - In Naruto's Waifu Marriage!, Yoruichi goes into heat once a year due to her "Werecat" kekkai genkai. Both her and her husband Naruto find it embarrassing, as she gets extra handsy when the time comes around.
- Linked in Life and Love: The plot kicks off when Blake goes into heat and she runs out of the medication normally distributed to Faunus to suppress it while stuck in her room due to a lockdown. Ruby, Weiss and Yang then spend the night keeping her satisfied. And once it's all over, she finds herself deeply infatuated with her three teammates.
- Prey Mate👁 Image
, a Teen Titans fic, starts when the half-demon Raven hits her second heat. She looks for someone to help with her heat and ends up attracted to Jinx due to the latter's magical abilities. - Triptych Continuum: In Cutie Mark Crusaders Alpha Pack Leader, Apple Bloom winds up with just about every male dog (of a certain age) in Ponyville following her — because, unknown to her, Winona is in heat and AB's picked up the scent. They're waiting for her to lead them back to the border collie. She decides she may be on the verge of manifesting a mark for canine training. Dogsledding ensues. Using a "borrowed" sleigh. On grass. In the summer.
- In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction Borrowed Time👁 Image
, it's as strongly implied as possible for an E-rated fic to be the reason for mandatory summer camp.
Film — Animation
- Back to the Outback: The bulk of the film taking place during funnel web spider mating season. As such, Frank keeps involuntarily starting up a mating dance, and at one point flirtatiously asks a black widow spider if she is busy later.
Film — Live-Action
- Congo: As the adventuring crew set up camp for their first night in the jungle, they're kept up by the constant noise of monkey screeching all around them, which happens to be because it's their mating season.
Monroe: When there's a moon like that, every monkey for 200 miles thinks he's Elvis Presley.
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them features a female Erumphent (a rhinoceros-like creature) who escapes from Newt Scamander's Bigger on the Inside magical briefcase. As it's her mating season, he finds her at a zoo, attempting to mate with a much smaller hippo and having already destroyed much of the area with her large size. Newt even attempts to lure her back into the case using the musk of a male of her species and imitating the male's mating dance.
Literature
- The Dinosaur Knights: One of the problems with raising dinosaurs is that on occasion a wild male will get close to domesticated herds and fight the dominant male to steal his harem. Seeing as these are, well, dinosaurs, there's not much that can be done to stop them, and requires the local aristocracy to deal with the problem as the equivalent of a medieval hunt.
- A Dog's Purpose:
- In his first life, Toby lives in a compound with several other dogs. One day he notices that he's discovered a new "game" to play with his best friend, a female named Coco. She doesn't like it so much. Toby's annoyed that all the other males also want to play his new "game". As it turns out, Coco was in heat and all the males wanted to mount her. Coco, Toby, and a few other dogs are promptly sterilized.
- Three reincarnations in, the protagonist reincarnates into a bitch for the first time. Having always been neutered, Ellie doesn't understand her first heat cycle. She just finds it uncomfortable and smelly. Ellie is promptly spayed after her cycle ends.
- Frost Dancers: Hares call mating season "frost dancing". It's a turbulent season where jacks fight over jills. It's the only time where hares have a hierarchy.
- High School D×D: Being a Cat Girl Nekomata, Koneko can go into this, and does later in the light novels after falling for the protagonist Issei. However, being fairly physically small for her already young age means that actually going through with it and getting pregnant would be very dangerous, and thus she and Issei avoid actually going through with the instincts of heat.
- Mark Of The Cat: The women of the Outer Regions may go into heat. note Some are apparently infertile and never go into heat, although it can be faked, albeit with some difficulty. Those that do emit pheromones that attract the attention of every man in the vicinity. They compete to impress her, and she chooses her favorite to mate with. Rather like cats, in fact.
- The Stormlight Archive: The Parshendi are a race of crustacean people who can change between different forms every Highstorm. Each form is suited to a different task and influences the mind of the user as well as the body. Mateform makes the wearer silly and irresponsible, focused almost entirely on sex, so most Parshendi prefer other forms when they don't want to reproduce.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Dewbacks will not breed in captivity, but will instead always try to return to their breeding grounds in the Jundland Wastes. Even docile and even-tempered animals will become temperamental and aggressive during this time, and will try to physically batter down obstacles if kept restrained. The only thing to do during this time is to let the beasts loose and wait for them to return home when the mating season is over. This is also why they have never been successfully introduced to other planets.
- Krayt dragons mate in high summer in the Jundland Wastes. They become extremely aggressive during this time, killing anything that they catch and shaking the Wastes with the sound of their battles and cries. Dewbacks time their own mating season so as to only arrive in the Wastes after the dragons have finished and gone back to their lairs.
- Stray: In his youth, Pufftail was a Casanova who would chase after any female cat in heat that he could scent. His yowling and flirting often annoyed both owners and other humans.
- Tailchaser's Song: It's briefly mentioned that Roofshadow avoids males during heat in order to stop herself from having a litter that she doesn't want yet.
- Whateley Universe: Aquerna (a Superhero School student with the Avatar power, which binds her to a Squirrel spirit) finds herself overcome by her spirit's mating instincts in early Spring; she is able to resist, running off for a Shower of Angst before her dorm mother steps in and gets her to counselling. The psychologist who treats her grumbles that this was a well known problem for those students with certain types of spirits or animal-like transformations, and that she should have been given more help by the school ahead of time.
- World War: The Race has a specific mating season — they're essentially asexual for most of the year and only briefly pair up to mate during the season — and are disgusted by humans being "in season" constantly. When their females arrive on Earth, it's discovered that ginger, which is an addictive narcotic to males of the Race, causes females to go into heat immediately. This results in mass chaos from Making Love in All the Wrong Places and introduces The Oldest Profession to their species, but also the previously-alien concept of monogamous relationships.
- Xanth: In "Night Mare", the equine protagonist has significant trouble acting against the antagonist because he is a werehorse and she finds herself drawn to his equine form when she goes into heat.
Live-Action TV
- Angel: "She": When females of the Oden Tal come of age, they go through a period where their "ko" supercharges their sexual urges, which manifests as intense heat and Super-Strength. At first they can't control this power, and need to be cooled constantly in baths of ice. They also can affect men when they're in sexual heat; Angel and Wes are both shown struggling with this.
- Dark Angel: Max's feline DNA causes her to go into heat a few times a year, as seen in the episodes "Heat" and "Meow".
- Star Trek:
- Vulcans experience pon farr every seven years, a hormonal imbalance that will kill them unless they mate or participate in a Duel to the Death. Being a Proud Scholar Race, they find the whole experience extremely mortifying, and to make matters worse, pon farr will inevitably occur in the most inconvenient and messy way possible, dragging the afflicted Vulcans (and their friends unlucky enough to find themselves caught in the middle) through an episode's worth of violent chaos.
- The episode that introduced the concept, "Amok Time" from Star Trek: The Original Series, shows Spock gradually losing his mind to the madness while trying to keep the whole thing from his friends. When Kirk finally gets him to confess, he invites the captain and McCoy to his wedding, only for it to go off the rails when the bride insists Spock fight to win her hand and picks Kirk as the other fighter. The results leave Spock devastated almost to the point of suicide before he finds out Kirk wasn't really dead.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Blood Fever" has the insanity crossing racial boundaries when Vorik, one of the Vulcan crewmen, starts losing his mind to pon farr. He forces a mind meld on B'Elanna when she turns down his advances, infecting her with the madness.
- Lwaxana Troi causes a couple of these incidents.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Manhunt": Lwaxana is going through the Betazoid equivalent of menopause (called "The Phase"), which causes a tremendous increase in her sex drive. She tries to mate with Captain Picard and get married to Commander Riker.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Fascination": Lwaxana suffers from what's basically empathic incontinence — she inadvertently broadcasts her emotions to other people, causing various members of the cast to suddenly experience strong lustful urges toward people they're already attracted to. If they're with someone who has similar feelings for them, the results are merely unprofessional and embarrassing. If they're with someone who isn't attracted to them, things get much worse. Chief O'Brien nearly attacks Quark after the latter sexually harasses Keiko.
- Vulcans experience pon farr every seven years, a hormonal imbalance that will kill them unless they mate or participate in a Duel to the Death. Being a Proud Scholar Race, they find the whole experience extremely mortifying, and to make matters worse, pon farr will inevitably occur in the most inconvenient and messy way possible, dragging the afflicted Vulcans (and their friends unlucky enough to find themselves caught in the middle) through an episode's worth of violent chaos.
Music
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Older monster manuals that go into detail about creature ecology sometimes mention this. For example, the world of Krynn has hatori, giant sand-swimming crocodiles, which are dangerous enough in normal circumstances, but every ten years congregate in the heart of the desert, where the males fight vicious battles over breeding rights. This leads desert nomads to speak of a "time of thunder when mountains die."
- Warhammer 40,000: Lukas the Trickster is mentioned to once have locked an Inquisitorial delegation inside a pen of groxes (very foul-tempered five-meter-long reptiles raised for their meat) while the creatures were in heat.
Video Games
- Distant Worlds: The Securans, Gizureans, and Dhayut all enter periodical "change cycles" where their reproductive rate is boosted for a few years. Securan empires also become a lot more friendly during this period, while Dhayut empires instead become significantly more aggressive.
- Don't Starve: The normally peaceful beefalo become extremely aggressive during mating season, during which baby beefalo spawn offscreen.
- Monster Hunter:
- As revealed in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (and reinstated in all future games where the monster appears), Black Diablos are female Diablos in heat. Their shells turn black during the mating season and they are much more aggressive and hostile toward intruders than usual, meaning that both the hunters and the creatures around face huge trouble when a Black Diablos is nearby.
- Monster Hunter Generations: Male Mitzusune have been known to go berserk during the mating season, they typically aren't hunted (and there are laws saying that they normally can't) but during the mating season, hunting requests come in to hunt males that have gone berserk near inhabited areas.
Webcomics
- The Cyantian Chronicles: Some Cyantian species have estrus cycles like the Earth animals they were made from, while in heat females become much more tempermental and prone to mood-swings.
- Freefall: Subverted. Florence, an Uplifted wolf, has an estrus cycle, but when her human boyfriend's mother asks what it's like to be in heat she turns it around👁 Image
and suggests that since humans constantly produce sex hormones a better question might be "what is it like not to be in heat?" - Kevin & Kell: All the rabbits enter a mating frenzy every March, referencing the March Hare. Kevin's friskiness during that time is sometimes the subject of the strips. This extends even to former humans turned into rabbits, if the second Danielle is any indication. Dorothy notes that all rabbit grandparents know to keep their schedules clear for that month, Fiona's hearing is good enough that she can hear the plate tectonics shift after they bang, and, the first March Rudy (a wolf) experiences after living in the Rabbit Warren, he's as randy as a rabbit....
Fiona: Look, I'm not complaining...
- Schlock Mercenary: Musth👁 Image
has been bred out of Uplifted elephants, though occasionally used as an insult👁 Image
. In the non-uplifted ones, it's usually suppressed by nanobots, but those can be hacked👁 Image
. - Sorcery 101 mentions that werewolves experience this during January, and, unlike with real wolves, it affects both sexes. A Breather Episode chapter explores this for comedy.
- S.S.D.D.: Annie, an anthropomorphic red fox, goes into heat once a year👁 Image
. It starts out as her acting even hornier than normal but then turns into a massive case of PMS.
Web Original
- Chakona Space: Many species of "morph" have some variety of estrus cycle, the hermaphroditic chakats have both a "heat" and "rut" cycle.
- Nobody Here: "Summer👁 Image
" is about Jogchem going to the zoo, only to find all the animals (including bugs) are busy procreating.I guess it's summer again...
Western Animation
- Celebrity Deathmatch: "The Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster": The Loch Ness Monster is captivated by Fran Drescher's Annoying Laugh, and snatches her up with its tail and flees the arena. It's discovered later that Drescher's laugh sounds very similar to the mating call of the Loch Ness Monster, and it intends to consummate the relationship.
- Futurama: "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" has Zoidberg behaving erratically because it's mating season for his species, which instills him with a very strong urge to return to his homeworld, set up a courtship display, mate, and die. He ends up in a duel to the death with Fry over a decapodian woman in a parody of Star Trek's "Amok Time".
- The Simpsons: In "Homer's Phobia", Homer, Bart, Moe and Barney get attacked by a herd of domesticated reindeer in an off-season Santa's Village. Moe guesses that their aggression is due to it being mating season.
- South Park: "Cat Orgy": Cartman's cat is in heat and attracts every male cat in town to his home, where they have the titular orgy.
- Space Ghost Coast to Coast: In one episode, Zorak is in a frenzy because it's mating season (especially because it's his first time). The issue is complicated by the fact that females of his species eat the male after mating.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: "Mewberty": Mewman females such as Star go through a process known as "Mewberty." It starts with them shedding little hearts whenever they're around attractive boys and ends with them transforming into a six-armed butterfly monster that captures and cocoons every male it comes across. Unfortunately despite how horrifying the whole event is for everyone involved, there's nothing you can do other than letting it run its course. After Star's Mewberty, she has tiny wings that she can barely use to flutter, and her mother later demonstrates the ability to go into six-armed butterfly mode at will.
Real Life
- Male elephants go into a period called musth when they're ready to mate. The condition can be identified by what look like tear streaks on the head and dribbling urine. They're extremely dangerous and unpredictable during this time due to the pain caused by the swollen glands on their head combined with a massive boost in their testosterone levels, basically turning into Real Life examples of Cruel Elephant.
- Male deer, elk, moose, and caribou all enter rut during mating season. Their antlers become extremely itchy, causing them to scratch the velvet off them and reveal the sharp bone underneath. They also become extremely aggressive and begin gathering into groups to fight, which can sometimes be to the death if the loser doesn't flee fast enough. They're also known to occasionally attack and sometimes even kill humans in this state.
- The male antechinus👁 Image
undergoes some drastic hormonal changes during the mating season in order to increase reproductive output. The side-effect of this is that these changes can and often are fatal, which encourages the males to roam as far as they can and mate with as many females as possible, often to the point of foregoing food and water. Between the extreme hormonal changes, starvation, dehydration, and simple exhaustion, it's very rare for males to survive more than one mating season.