• 3 days ago
"Animals have done it all."

Oral sex, masturbation, homosexual sex ...
This evolutionary biologist is showing just how widespread sexual diversity is among animals.

Category

🐳
Animals
Transcript
00:00This is what the inside of a dolphin vagina looks like.
00:03Females have a fully functioning clitoris
00:06that's located about here.
00:07We haven't invented anything.
00:14We just haven't.
00:15You know, animals have done it all.
00:16There is oral sex, for example,
00:18which is often seen in nature, is seen in bats.
00:23And when they do,
00:24the success of pregnancy actually increases.
00:28Some fish, the males have little whiskers in their mouth
00:31that they use to tickle the female genitalia
00:33for the exact same reason.
00:44Dolphins have sex all the time.
00:47They have sex not just males with females,
00:48but also females with females and males with males.
00:51Females have been observing rubbing each other's clitorises
00:55with their snouts and their flippers.
00:58And they have also been observed masturbating,
01:00which basically involves them finding objects
01:04on the forest floor that they can rub up against.
01:06We did this study looking at the dolphin clitoris,
01:09the morphology of the dolphin clitoris.
01:11What we found was very definite evidence
01:13that the clitoris seems to be functioning for pleasure.
01:28The fact that animals have sex
01:30outside of just purely reproductive purposes
01:33would generally be a good indication
01:35that there's another goal to that sexual interaction.
01:39Many people have argued this,
01:41that they're practicing for the real thing.
01:43It might be also some kind of social cohesion.
01:46Bonobos are apes, close relatives of chimpanzees,
01:50and they have a very female-oriented society.
01:54And female bonobos have been seen
01:57having a lot of homosexual sex.
01:59These sexual interactions help to solidify
02:02bonding between females
02:03because they cooperate together quite a bit.
02:06And they have very well-developed clitorises.
02:09♪♪
02:19We know that they certainly seem to have pleasure
02:23during sexual interactions, like in many, many primates
02:26that have been studied in the lab.
02:28You know, females, you can observe them.
02:30They're grimacing, they're vocalizing,
02:32they're rolling their eyes, they're curling their toes.
02:35So having all sorts of reactions
02:38that are consistent with a pleasure response,
02:41and even orgasm.
02:42♪♪
02:46So homosexuality in nature is super widespread.
02:50We have known this for a very long time.
02:54In fact, you know, there is this famous explorer
02:57who went down to the Antarctica
03:01and he watched the penguins behaving.
03:03This was in the 1800s.
03:05And he came back absolutely shocked
03:07to find all this diversity of sexual behavior.
03:11And so he never reported it.
03:12He, like, was so shocked because culturally, of course,
03:16and socially back then, it was terrible.
03:18And I think that that's what's happened
03:20with many researchers.
03:21In the 90s, we had this beautiful book
03:23called Biological Exuberance
03:25that sort of brought it all back to everyone's face to say,
03:29oh, you think homosexual behavior is weird?
03:32Look how many animals are having it.
03:33And the examples in that book
03:35include absolutely every taxa of animals
03:38from insects, fish, birds, mammals, primates, everybody.
03:44So the question is almost not, you know,
03:48is homosexual behavior common?
03:49But it's like, who's not having it?
03:51Because it seems like everyone is having it, honestly.
03:58Male and female is just one possible outcome of evolution.
04:03There are fungi that have 10,000 mating types.
04:07They're like, male, female, what's that?
04:09Of course, sex change, you know,
04:11the blue-headed rats are one of the best known example.
04:14You have one dominant male
04:16and he controls a whole group of females.
04:18But if that male dies,
04:20the next largest female becomes the male in the group.
04:25She's like, where's the male?
04:26There's no male?
04:27I'm gonna be the male.
04:28And she starts biting everyone, becoming super aggressive.
04:32And then in a matter of days,
04:33she goes from being a female with ovaries and eggs
04:38to being a male with testes and sperm.
04:46Males should be more eager and females should be more coy
04:49and that females have to be seduced
04:52and that they don't want sex as much as males do.
04:55So that was kind of like the old story.
04:57But a much different story has emerged more recently.
05:01So for example, with birds,
05:03we know that females are actively very sexual
05:06and they're just as you would expect with males,
05:10that when it is advantageous to have more sex,
05:12they will try to have more sex as well.
05:20People will only learn what they're exposed to.
05:23And if they never hear these topics talked about
05:26in the context of, of course, this is what animals do.
05:29This is totally normal, then they're not aware of it.
05:34But it's also, as I was saying,
05:37the fault of the scientist to some degree,
05:39because when we have seen this behavior in the past,
05:42we've been very reluctant to talk about it.
05:45The other problem is that then,
05:46even when that information is available,
05:48it's not widespread.
05:49I feel that animals are perfectly capable
05:52of having complex emotional and inner lives.
06:00I think that the more we go forward,
06:02the more we're going to be hearing about this amazing
06:04diversity of sexual strategies in nature.