But cannibalism isn't the most bizarre part of the spring spawning season. There are other males on the prowl, and these males use deceptive tactics to ensure that they, too, have small fry. DeWoody and his colleagues also have studied sunfish and found that as few as 85 percent of the fish were nest-builders, which scientists called bourgeois males. The rest, the researchers found, used their unusual sexual development to trick the bourgeois males and reproduce. There are two types of non-bourgeois males, which scientists call sneakers and satellites.
Sneakers are adult males disguised as immature males.
As their name implies, sneakers approach a nest guarded by a bourgeois male and, when the moment is right, darts over the nest. The second type of parasite male is even more deceptive. The satellite males lack the colorful pigmentation of bourgeois male sunfish, and they are smaller than a typical male. They look almost exactly like a female sunfish. The satellite sunfish approaches the nest as if it, too, wants to spawn with the bourgeois male, but instead of releasing eggs it releases sperm.