Noun
A male ruff (bird, Philomachus pugnax, syn. Calidris pugnax) that permanently mimics a female so as to gain access to mating territories and "steal" matings.
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Here, we describe a rare female-like morph of ruffs: the ‘missing’ third alternative mating strategy, which we have called ‘faeder’. Faeders are slightly larger than females and in late April have testes 2.5 time the size of testes of normal males.
Faeders, male ruffs that mimic females in plumage and "sneak" copulations at leks, secrete monoesters like other males.
It has recently been discovered that a third mating strategy exists for males - the 'faeder' or 'sneaker', which number only about 1% of the Ruff population.
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These “faeder” males, as they are called, were found to have testes 2.5 times larger than those of normal males during the peak breeding time of late April and are delightfully termed “sneakers.”