Males display diverse behaviours to try to obtain mates. Somemale mating tactics, such as lekking, are spectacular becauseof the behaviours that they involve. Lekking males establishtiny, clustered territories without any resources attractive tofemales. They perform eye-catching displays, hardly feed,and compete intensely. Here, I describe the challenge thatlekking poses to our understanding of the evolution of malemating behaviour. I outline the main hypotheses proposed toexplain this behaviour and synthesize the evidence for thesehypotheses from empirical tests in wild populations.