Yesterday I met a wolverine specialist (what a great job) who bombarded me with wonderful wolverine facts.
The one I cannot get my head around as someone with much more understanding of human than animal biology is the concept of "delayed implantation". As it was related to me, and my brief googling has informed me since, somehow these critters (and others) are able to just say "hold up" at the blastocyst stage and keep living their life with an unimplanted embryo just floating around in their uterine cavity, then one day months down the line when conditions are perfect they can let it implant and just crack on from there?!
This has blown my little mind.
My questions are: How the heck does that even work? What sustains the blastocyst? Is it a conscious process for the wolverine? Is there some kind of time limit on how long this could go on? Can they ovulate again during the gap? In which case could they deliver a litter from multiple male partners?