Bad Animal Sex Science Linkarama

Some recent headlines in cutting-edge research into the appalling sex lives of animals:

Jealous Hermaphrodite Shrimp Murder Their Rivals
Cleaner shrimp are pretty kinky creatures, able to reproduce both as male and female. They can't fertilize their own eggs, though, so they do need a partner. And when they get one, they don't take any chances. This research found that when tankmates molt, the shrimp take advantage of their vulnerable state to kill them. This continues until only one pair is left in the tank.

Spiders with good gifts get lucky for longer
This research reveals the gold-digging nature of female spiders. The males trade gifts for sex, and the females have upscale tastes:

Male nursery web spiders carefully prepare silk-wrapped gifts to woo potential mates into having sex. But if the present is worthless -- like inedible plant seeds or the tasteless remains of eaten prey -- mating ends abruptly.

Dolphins team up to get the girl
Uh, right. They make it sound so charming, but, as readers of this blog should be well aware, dolphins are known gang rapists. The research reported in this article investigated why they do this. (Apparently "because they are assholes" is never enough for a scientist.) The results show that dolphins in these gangs are more likely to sire offspring. Big surprise, since as the researcher notes, "The female can't get away from them."


Dolphin doing the sort of job these filthy animals deserve by Flickr user septuagesima.

The blogger isn't the only one who's prickly today

Yet again, it's hard to know who's worse, humans or animals.

I recently stumbled across a press release touting the results of an online poll of Australians who have nothing better to do than respond to an online poll about what is the cutest baby Australian animal.

The winner was the baby echidna, and this result impressed me with the broad-mindedness of Australians, given that the picture above is a good example of the creature in question. Not exactly your conventional example of cuteness and beauty.

However, the plot thickened when I tracked down the blog that conducted this survey and discovered that this was the photo posted with the entry announcing the results:


I can only hope that by the time you follow that link they've responded to my comment and changed the photo, since, with the enormous insight into the natural world that we have come to expect from lovers of cute animals, what they are using there is a actually a picture of a hedgehog.

So who knows what the poll-takers thought they were actually voting on. But, while I'm on the subject, we don't want to let the echidnas themselves off the hook, as they have quite a bit to answer for as well. Their sex lives are particularly appalling. Researchers have found that they commonly have group sex, with up to four males attempting to mate with one female at a time. At least that's presumably consensual, though: worse, males are also happy to mate with a female while she is still hibernating.

Perhaps this isn't surprising since even the basic reproductive anatomy of this animal is an offense to any right-thinking person. This is a mammal that lays eggs, after all, so it fails to follow even the most basic rules of its class. The following video is a good introduction to the "horrifying and disgusting reproductive practices" of the echidna, if you think you can take it. Three words of warning: four-headed penis.



Picture of actual baby echidna from NTNews.com. For the curious I recommend these Flickr results.

Shocking scientific standards

Last week, we saw that children's books - even when based on a "true" story - can't be trusted to provide our youth with the truth about animals. Today, we find the same lack of context in a branch of literature that ought to be more reliable.

This blog was was initially thrilled at the news that an Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to the researchers who discovered that fruit bats have oral sex and copulate at the same time, which we reported on here. Finally, we thought, this sort of thing is getting the publicity it deserves.

However, our pleasure immediately turned to disappointment when we read one of the scientists, Gareth Jones, quoted in the eminent Guardian as saying:

"It is the first documented case of fellatio by adult animals other than humans to my knowledge."

This scientist has clearly not done his homework. Never mind combing the periodical indexes - with little effort, he could have simply read the book mentioned in our last post. Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl, in the course of seven hundred pages worth of evidence for homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom, also documents many other sorts of, to put it somewhat tastefully, "non-procreative" sexual interactions.

Consulting the index of this tome, under "oral stimulation (heterosexual)," there are entries for twenty different kinds of animals, and under "(homosexual)", twenty-five.

In fact, this act has been documented in all sorts of creatures, including but not limited to primates, cheetahs, hedgehogs, and various fruit bats. Not only don't some care what sex their partner is - for example, in walruses and manatees, pairs of males do it together - also, some don't even care what species - caribou and moose do it to each other.

Bagemihl's book was published in 1999, and it seems likely that in the last ten years, many other naturalists have observed such behavior. I'd go check some journal indexes if I wasn't feeling kind of sick to my stomach already (do you have any idea what it is like to read seven hundred pages of this sort of thing?). But this is exactly what our much better paid, fruit-bat-voyeur scientist friends should have done before making public claims about discovering a first.

When a respectable academic makes a claim "to my knowledge," we expect better that this. How are we going to make progress in exposing bad animal behavior if scientists do their background research so poorly?


Full frontal fruitbat by Flickr user hanifridz.

For animals, all's fair in love

There's a book called "Dogs Never Lie About Love." That's the sort of thing people like to believe, but in fact, deception is as common among other species as it is among our fellow humans. Much of this deception is geared toward the basic goals of food and, yes, love. Some animals, upon finding food, will use a predator alarm call so their buddies will run away and the liar doesn't have to share. Others will do the same to keep fellow males away from an attractive female.

Some deception methods are pretty sophisticated, like the orangutans who use leaves held up to the mouths when they call, so they sound like they're coming from a bigger animal.

In other cases, it's so basic that the animal's actual physiology has evolved to do the trick - like the male lizards who don't change to their adult coloration so they can sneak around mating with females right under the nose of a dominant male.

The latest scientfic discovery about animal liars shows that animals will also fake it to make sure their date sticks around when she shows signs of losing interest. Male topi antelopes were caught in the act, as reported by Science News:

Study leader Jakob Bro-Jørgensen noticed that when a female would start to wander away from a male’s territory, the male would look in the direction she was headed, prick his ears and snort loudly — the same snort the animals use when they’ve noticed a lion, leopard or other approaching predator.

“It was quite funny — it made me laugh,” says Bro-Jørgensen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool in England. “It’s such an obvious lie — clearly there’s no lion.”

Obvious, maybe, but apparently it works. The researchers played recordings and discovered that females couldn't tell the difference between lying snorts and truthful ones. A snorting male would get two or three more chances at mating, and they didn't hesitate to milk it - their snorts were lies nine times more often than they were true.

Let's face it: of course animals lie about love. It's too important not to. They'd lie about themselves on Internet dating sites too, if they had opposable thumbs to type with. The difference is our superior technology, not animals' superior moral nature.

Harsh penalty for cow seductress

From the Times of South Africa:

An 18-year-old man on Indonesia's resort island of Bali claimed he was seduced by a cow after being caught having sex with the animal.

A neighbour caught Gusti Ngurah Alit in the act on Sunday and immediately reported him to local authorities, village chief Embang Ida Bagus Legawa said.

"He was caught by one of the residents standing naked while holding the back of the cow," Legawa said.

On Friday, Alit underwent a cleansing ritual in which he was bathed and the cow was drowned in the sea to rid the village of bad luck.

Alit said he did not see a cow but a beautiful young woman. "She called my name and seduced me, so I had sex with her," he said.

He had to pay 2,000 old coins as a traditional punishment while the village chief paid the owner of the cow 5 million rupiah (545 dollars) in compensation.

OK, I'm usually an advocate of placing blame on animals that have earned it instead of humans making excuses for them. And I'm not suggesting Alit should have been drowned as well. Still, the difference in penalties here does seem a bit harsh. Can't we find a middle ground?


Pretty cow by Flickr user GuruAnt.

Kangaroo pervert commits cross-species harassment

Perhaps naming the area "the Honeymoon Ranges" gave one kangaroo the idea that it was the right place to look for love. But the human females of Australia are understandably less than thrilled with the attention. The Northern Territory News reports:

One resident who walks along the bike track to the Mary Ann Dam regularly said she realised she was being followed early one morning.

"I turned around and saw this big kangaroo behind me, so I hastened my steps," she said.

"It seemed a bit odd, but I continued walking and didn't think much about it.

"Then on the return walk he was there waiting for me," she said.

"With his male pride on full alert, he started circling me.

"There was no doubt about what he wanted, the randy old thing.

"It was a huge kangaroo and quite intimidating.

"I yelled at him to go away, waved my hands about and let him know I wasn't interested, but he was persistent - I'll give him that."

The kangaroo was also reported to have approached the crowd at an evening car race and chatted up a woman who approached him thinking he was just "a cute, friendly kangaroo."

Tanya was oblivious to the amorous nature of the interlude, but the kangaroo's intentions were clearly evident to other speedway fans.

"Yeah, apparently he was quite aroused," she said.

"I'm actually glad I didn't notice."

She got off easy, but let's hope the women of Australia take a lesson from this. For safety's sake, better assume animals are guilty until proven "cute and friendly," not the other way around.


Rude kangaroo by Flickr user Dan Taylor.

Spring Fever

It's the time of year when an animal's fancy turns to thoughts of perpetuating the species, but as we've seen here many times before, some of them are doing it wrong.

Usually this inconveniences no one but the animals themselves. We've seen more than one case where a male mates a female to death, not exactly an effective way to pass on one's genes, as well as a duck mating with a dead duck of the same sex. Even the ones who have sex with a different species usually only bother other animals, although not always.

But this sort of thing gets out of hand when an innocent bystander is held hostage to animal perversion: In Witt, Illinois, a woman was trapped in her house for several hours when a goose tried to mate with her concrete lawn ornament (pictured above).

Every time Joanne Martin tried to open her front door, the lust-crazed gander attacked her. Eventually six men were trying to assist, without success.

“Brent Bourke beat the heck out of him with a stick,” says Joanne, “and ran him out on Highway 16. My house is on 16. He was going pretty good, but then the goose turned around and came back at him. That was the funniest part.”

Brent, with the stick-defying goose at his heels, beat a hasty retreat and ended up back in the house with the rest of them. The goose was still king of the yard.

But that stick thing had worked as well as anything, so Bill Harris, another would-be rescuer, took a stick and whacked at the goose. Bill was soon back in the house as well.

The goose was undeterred from its mating frenzy when firecrackers were thrown at it, as well. Finally, in a concerted effort, a couple of the men held the goose at bay long enough for the others to grab the statue and close it in a shed. With the object of his passion now inaccessible, the frustrated goose eventually wandered off.

The story was over... or was it? A reporter visiting a few weeks later made an ominous observation:

The day I visited Joanne, I hauled her concrete goose out of the shed just long enough to get a picture, then I put it back. It’s a nice-looking concrete goose, sure, but nothing to get all that excited about.

As I pulled away, the goose safely back in the shed, I noticed it wasn’t Joanne’s only lawn ornament. She has two concrete deer.

Read the whole story by Dave Bakke at the State Journal-Register. I'm serious, go read it, and read all the way to the author's contact info at the end which includes this wise observation:

Everybody has a story. The problem is that some of them are boring.

Science filling in the details of bad animal behavior

If you think bad animal behavior is just a lark, suitable for blogging and a laugh, you're wrong. It's a serious scientific pursuit. I may get nothing out of this business, but some South African researchers lately got an actual publication out of it: a report in the Journal of Ethology about a seal trying to rape a penguin.

As the BBC reports:

The brazenness of the seal's behaviour left those who saw it in no doubt as to what was happening.

(Researchers) De Bruyn and a colleague were on Trypot beach at Marion Island to study elephant seals when they noticed a young, adult male Antarctic fur seal, in good condition, attempting to copulate with an adult king penguin of unknown sex.

The 100kg seal first subdued the 15kg penguin by lying on it.

The penguin flapped its flippers and attempted to stand and escape - but to no avail.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.

You have to give credit to both the scientists and the BBC for having a much more realistic view of animal behavior than most. They don't express surprise at the mere fact of attempted animal sexual assault, which we've seen on this blog with animals as varied as frogs and dolphins:

Sexual coercion among animals is extremely common: males of many species often harass, coerce or force females of their own kind to mate, while animals are also known occasionally to harass sexually a member of a closely related species.

They even realize that these incidents aren't confined to members of the same species - as we've seen, again, with dolphins and with a parrot who've had humans as the objects of their attentions. So, the researchers are quite precise about what's unusual about this incident:

But this is thought to be the first recorded example of a mammal trying to have sex with a member of another class of vertebrate, such as a bird, fish, reptile, or amphibian.

This is what is comes down to: bad animal sexual behavior is so widespread, you've got to get that specific to get a scientific "first" out of it.

The researchers consider various possible motives for the behavior, from aggression to playfulness. But if it was a misdirected attempt at cross-order romance, he's definitely doing it wrong:

After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted.

Really, at least send flowers - or some fish - if you're not going to call, you know?


You can read the whole article here, if you're into that sort of thing.

Thanks to Sir Pilkington's weirdimals Twitter for the tip. Photo of a different unnatural arrangement of a seal and a penguin by Flickr user shaindlin.

Prominent position for pervert parrot

As we have seen again and again, it's no wonder animals keep acting the way they do when people so often actually reward them for their bad behavior. In perhaps the most fantastic example so far, a parrot in New Zealand has been given a prominent government job in response to his worldwide fame - as a pervert.

A kakopo named Sirocco, member of a highly endangered New Zealand species, became an internet sensation due to a video clip in which he pleasured himself upon the head of naturalist Mark Carwardine, who was filming a TV series based on his book with the late Douglas Adams. (In case you haven't already seen this clip, you can click here. Or, more tastefully, not.)

Now, this perverted kakapo has been appointed official government "spokesbird" for conservation. The prime minister says of the bird:

“He’s very media-savvy, he’s got a worldwide fan base – they hang on every squawk that comes out of his beak. He’ll be a great official spokesbird for New Zealand,” he said.“Sirocco can speak very loudly on this topic and by the end of this campaign people will be a lot more aware of what’s going on.”

I probably don't need to tell you that the bird now has his own website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc.

I am appalled by the precedent that has been set here. Now that birds know that this is how to get ahead... well, for one thing, I think I'm going to start wearing a hat.

Rabbit with a habit

If there's one thing this blog proves, it's that animals have all kinds of vices that you might have imagined were purely human. We've seen animals indulging in lust, vanity, drunkenness, gluttony, laziness, and lying, just to name a few.

There is almost nothing left... almost. But this one surprised even me: a rabbit in England that is addicted to gambling.

This compulsive gambler bunny is obsessed with a slot machine in the pub where he lives in Worcestershire. Pub landlord Ian Randall brought the rabbit indoors to escape a cold snap, and claims that his customers "took to him straight away." Apparently at least one of the rabbit's other vices fits right in: He enjoys cider - which in an English pub, does not refer to a fruit juice for children.

But aside from hogging what they call the "fruit machine," the rabbit has other unseemly behaviors, according to the Worcester News:

As well as trying his luck on the fruit machine Daisy has also been getting fruity with Mr Randall’s sons’ toy rabbit.

"Daisy" is a male, despite the name, and putting that together with the colorful pictures of tasty fruit on the machine and the alcoholic indulgence, he may well be a very confused bunny indeed. But while most of the pub's patrons are tolerant of this lapine interloper, a few of them are not confused at all about the proper way to react:

"There is a handful of drinkers here who would probably rather put him into a stew though,” Mr Randall said.

Bats have better sex than you

Although sex in the animal kingdom has many offensive permutations, oral sex among animals has rarely been documented by science. But a team of Chinese and British researchers report that short-nosed fruit bats have oral sex AND copulate at the same time:

We found that female short-nosed fruit bats C. sphinx lick their mate's penis regularly during copulation, and that each second of licking results in approximately 6 extra seconds of copulation. Copulations also last longer if licking occurs than when no licking takes place. Our observations are the first to show regular fellatio in adult animals other than humans.

As you can imagine, this is only possible because fruit bats are far more flexible than humans. If you click here, you can see a graph of copulation time illustrated with a lovely little drawing of a couple in the act, by Mei Wang (not making that up).

And if you click here, warning:

The video is sexually explicit and was edited and soundtracked by the researchers.

The abstract of the article concludes:

At present, we do not know why genital licking occurs, and we present four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that may explain the function of fellatio in C. sphinx.

I think these guys just don't get it, because when you read the whole article, it turns out that not one of those hypotheses is "because it's FUN."

You can read the entire paper here if you want, you sicko.


Photo by Flickr user Diana Lili M. You'll never look at a fruit bat tongue quite the same way again, will you?

Vacation Linkarama: Bad taste videos

Finally, revenge for millennia of pooping birds, by comic Demetri Martin.

From the blog Neurotopia, an extremely not safe for work video of a chimp that brings together several of the themes of this blog, including the fact that primates can use tools to behave badly, and that animals don't only have sexual pleasure for the purpose of reproduction, and that's all I am going to say.


Photo of a species famous for pooping by the bird-obsessed misterqueue.

"Remembered fondly"

Last week we met Elvis, a rooster whose mate died of exhaustion due to his sexual enthusiasm. Now here's an animal that shows Elvis how a gentleman does it.

THE SUN, UK - A randy sea lion named Mike died of exhaustion after a marathon mating session at a zoo.

The whiskery beast had been enjoying a morning romp with his harem Farah, Tiffy and Soda when keepers noticed something was wrong.

The dad of 12 was so exhausted that he could not even get out of his pool - and had to be pulled clear by staff.

Despite receiving treatment from a vet, the 45-stone "good natured" sea lion died from acute heart failure.

A spokesman for Nuremberg animal park in Germany said on Tuesday: "Mating season is a common time for fatalities when bulls often stop eating for days to devote themselves fully to mating.

"For sea lion bulls with a harem this is the most exhausting time."

California-born Mike was 19 - two years older than the average life expectancy.

The spokesman added: "He will be remembered fondly."

Thanks for the link to Sir Pilkington-Smythe's Twitter; picture of a no doubt perfectly innocent and respectable sea lion from Misterqueue.

Here's one Craigslist ad I'd really like to see

TELEGRAPH, UK - Elvis the cockerel has earned his reputation as a ladykiller after his hen died from exhaustion, seemingly unable to keep up with her mate's sexual appetite.

The cockerel used to have four hens vying for his attention but after three died he was left with only Berol to keep his libido satisfied.

Unfortunately she had to be put to sleep after becoming exhausted by Elvis's constant demands.

Now Elvis's owner Katherine Cooke is looking for a new home and hen harem for the one-year-old cockerel.

There's a nice photo of Elvis if you click on the link to the story. He's definitely a handsome fellow, but he obviously doesn't need any more encouragement, so instead of reproducing his photo that's another attractive rooster from the carousel of Turtle Back Zoo in New Jersey.

Vacation Linkarama

Off on a trip to the idyllic Garden State - have a go at some other bloggers who've done a good job with bad animal behavior lately.

In the New York Times online, science proves that cats did not evolve to love us;

Wired magazine reports on a study showing that penguins that won't pick up the parenting slack for a handicapped spouse;

and New Scientist reports on monkeys that are famous for their life of free love and peace, man, but turn out to be killers when they don't get enough nooky.

Rude penguin by penguin fan Misterqueue.

Not safe for work (especially if your co-workers are cold-blooded)

If you've ever spent even a moment observing tortoises at the zoo, you probably noticed that they seem to have nothing on their minds but sex. It's particularly conspicuous with the very large species - and not just visually, but also because they call attention to themselves by moaning and groaning at quite a volume.

Smaller tortoises are just as bad if less noticeable, though, and apparently some of them have unnatural inclinations, as you can see in this YouTube video of a tortoise's encounter with a shoe.

I thought about trying to embed this video but... I couldn't do it. I just felt too dirty. In any case, then you wouldn't see the many similarly disgusting entries that YouTube helpfully suggests under 'Related Videos.' Just don't say I didn't warn you.

And don't be fooled by the thoughtful expression on the face of the tortoise in that photo by Flickr user Misterqueue.

Dolphins and their dirty secrets

"Everybody who's done research in the field is tired of dolphin lovers who believe these creatures are floating hobbits," said well known animal trainer Karen Pryor, quoted in the New York Times - in 1992. She must be 17 years tireder now, because nothing has changed.

As we saw Friday, all dolphins have to do is show up and people assume they're doing some great good deed - despite the fact that when they can get close enough, they may actually attempt sexual assault.

Their own sex lives are no more gentle or romantic, the same Times article relates. In fact, male dolphins actually form gangs to capture females to have sex.

Males collude with their peers as a way of stealing fertile females from competing dolphin bands. And after they have succeeded in spiriting a female away, the males remain in their tight-knit group to assure the female stays in line, performing a series of feats that are at once spectacular and threatening. Two or three males will surround the female, leaping and bellyflopping, swiveling and somersaulting, all in perfect synchrony with one another. Should the female be so unimpressed by the choreography as to attempt to flee, the males will chase after her, bite her, slap her with their fins or slam into her with their bodies. The scientists call this effort to control females "herding," but they acknowledge that the word does not convey the aggressiveness of the act.

"Sometimes the female is obviously trying to escape, and the noises start to sound like they're hurting each other," said Dr. Rachel A. Smolker of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "The hitting sounds really hard, and the female may end up with tooth-rake marks."

At the time of this article, one question was still unanswered:

although what happens once the males have herded in a female, and whether she goes for one or all of them, is not yet known: the researchers have yet to witness a dolphin copulation.

I guess I could look for more recent research on this, but aren't you appalled enough for now? If not, how about this:

...once she gives birth the alliance loses interest in her. Female dolphins raise their calves as single mothers for four to five years.

So utterly charming!

Dolphin laughing at us by Flickr user holga new orleans.

More primate prostitution

It's not news that certain primates pay for sex - not people, I mean, but we know about those macaques that are willing to give it up in exchange for a nice grooming.

So it's no surprise that our closer relatives do it too - but at least they have the sense to hold out for better pay. Male chimps pay with meat for mating, say researchers from the Max Planck Institute:

"By sharing, the males increase the number of times they mate, and the females increase their intake of calories," said Dr Gomes.

"What's amazing is that if a male shares with a particular female, he doubles the number of times he copulates with her, which is likely to increase the probability of fertilising that female."

As we've seen in the past, though, researchers find ways to make excuses for the relatives, arguing that this is less like prostitution and more like... marriage?

"We looked at chimps when they were not in oestrus, this means they don't have sexual swellings and aren't copulating."

"The males still share with them - they might share meat with a female one day, and only copulate with her a day or two later."

...Professor Gurven, who was not involved in this study, added that the nature of this exchange of meat for sex is "kind of like pair bonding in humans, because it's long-term."

No comment!


(Full of himself chimp by Flickr user Misterqueue.)

Depends on your point of view

Some consider gay marriage to be a form of bad behavior. But in China, a pair of male penguins changed people's minds.

THE SUN, UK: They were once given the cold shoulder at the wildlife park in China for stealing heterosexual couples' eggs to nest as their own.

But after being allowed to try out with eggs rejected by their mothers the couple have become the zoo's best penguin parents.

Now keepers at Polarland Zoo in Harbin, north east China, have rewarded their devotion with a wedding day.

One wore a tie and the other was dressed in a red blouse – a traditional Chinese bridal colour – as they stepped into their icy wedding room to the music of the Wedding March.

A similar pair in New York's Central Park Zoo had a children's book written about them - but, sadly, in most of this country a wedding would be out of the question, even for animals that are already appropriately attired for the ceremony.

(Photo by Flickr user Paul Mannix.)

Sneaky transvestite lizards

It is my impression that most human transvestites aren't men who dress up as women to pick up women, but, apparently for lizards, it's a good strategy.

Researchers have recently found a species of lizard in South Africa where non-dominant males delay changing to their adult coloration so they can sneak around and steal women without the dominant males realizing what's going on. This works because juveniles of the Augrabies Flat Lizard all start out the color of females.

"By delaying the onset of colour to a more convenient period, these males, termed she-males, are making the best of a bad situation."

Australian National University associate professor Scott Keogh said opting to become transvestites for a period offered young males a dual advantage.

"They can avoid potentially dangerous bouts with dominant males and still have access to normally inaccessible females," he said.

I almost wrote "steal women right under the dominant males' noses," but in fact, you can fool them by looks - but if the dominant male gets close enough to smell, the she-males are in trouble:

University of Sydney researcher Jonathan Webb said... the she-males needed to be nimble to avoid advances from dominant males smitten by their fake female allure.

"Males are fooled by looks, but not by scent," he said.

"She-males are able to maintain this deception by staying one step ahead of a prying male, and thereby avoiding a nosey tongue that might give the game away."

Maybe a good cologne would help?

(Photo from coverage at Mambaonline.com, Gay South Africa Lifestyle News.)