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?

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.

When cats attack, part 2: Felines go postal

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night keep the mailman from his duty. But, in England at least, claws are a different matter.

As we saw on Monday, two stories this year of cats attacking postmen got this blog's bad-animal-sense twitching. Was this just the tip of a feline iceberg?

In fact, fairly cursory research revealed that these stories crop up quite regularly, and the cats are not the only problem: it's also their owners.

-In August 2002, a carrier attacked by cats called Boo Boo and Yogi told a dramatic story:

"I put up with it the first couple of times, but the last scratch was quite deep. Blood was dripping on to the driveway and over other letters in my bag. After the attack the cat jumped up on the window sill and looked out at me as if to say 'got you that time'."

The owner, as in our previous cases, was disbelieving:

Mr Davies said: "I can't understand the attacks. They are both really well behaved cats but are very playful."

Perhaps, in another instance of us being two countries divided by a common language, the Brits use the word "playful" to mean "bloodthirsty"? (It would explain a lot about their soccer culture, I suppose.)

- In May 2004, a family had to install a mailbox at their front gate because the attacks of their cat Bat meant that postmen were at risk approaching the door.

The Coyne family realised they had a problem with their territorial pet when an official letter from the Royal Mail arrived complaining about their "guard cat".

It said the postman had been scratched and "more incredible than this, your cat has been known to jump onto the postman's leg and dig its claws in".

-In December 2007, Georgi left a postman bleeding after scratching his hands as he put letters through the door. Her owner, typically, denied any malicious intent: "I think she only wants the letters but obviously she must just accidentally catch his fingers."

-In June 2009, another owner poo-pooed the threat when he got a letter threatening suspension of delivery:

Mr Ridge said friends and neighbours thought the threat was laughable and he plans to ignore the letter.

"We were not around when this happened, but it seems some mail was put through the letterbox and their hand was scratched.

"Illy is only a kitten and I am sure she was just playing."

Mr Ridge, who runs a fruit and veg business, added: "Everyone finds it so amusing that our playful kitten has been mistaken for some savage beast."

- In October 2009, the owners of Magic got that same letter after he dashed out his cat door and attacked the carrier three days in a row. The head of delivery services had to bravely come to their house to deliver the news as well, because, of course, they couldn't see the problem:

"I told them my cat wouldn't hurt a fly... He's a soft cat. We've never seen him attack someone and we've never heard of him hurting anyone before. I can't believe they are saying this."

As these stories show, cat attacks on the mail are not only a regular occurrence, the problem is compounded by the owners, who react with either disbelief and laughter.

But as a postal spokesperson said in the case of Bat:"The safety of our people is paramount and attacks by animals are not amusing when you're at the receiving end."

Fortunately, some attack-cat owners are better role models. We'll turn to those encouraging stories on Monday.