Photo by michael baltic.

There are only 150 or so Chinese alligators left in the wild, which means that if they had any sense of mortality, these critters would be breeding like crazy.

But apparently they don’t have the “survival of the fittest” will to reproduce, or maybe they just have a headache. So one Japanese zoo tried to set the mood by beating taiko drums, “because of its similarity to the animals’ natural pre-coital cry,” reports Agence-France Presse.

Moving quickly past the revelation that Japanese drums sound like alligator mating calls, Grist List is sad to report that the alligator sex crisis continues:

“After listening to the drum performance, the female alligator Susu cried a few times but the male, Yoyo, appeared not to be interested,” said Hideaki Yamamoto from Sapporo’s Maruyama Zoo.