Animalistiary #6; Sex? Yes, They Almost Always Said Yes To Sex!

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Picture Source - Author [All images used are CC0]

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Hi guys,

Welcome to the 6th edition of the Animalistiary, my own series featuring a few animals with interesting characters, compiled into a single article. There has been a long pause between the 5th and the 6th edition of this series, so starting from this week, I would commit myself to make it at least once a week, giving some room for me to find an inspiration and idea while writing articles of other genres. Yeah, I do have quite a bit of fascination in other topics and who are we kidding, we are the man of science. As long as it caught my attention, it will be worth it. In this episode of Animalistiary, I want to list out some of the animals which love to do it and some may be born and grow for the sake of it; I was talking about sex of course. There is nothing weird about spending your time mating with females if you were an animal. Some animals like to do it in a different time at a specific place but others, for example, a bonobo can do it at any time and any place.

Among humans, sex addicts may present themselves with a few signs and symptoms which could indicate their obsession towards that particular behaviour. Animals, on the other hand, are willing to die just to pass on their genetic materials to their future generation so that they would not extinct. I think, I have covered a few of those animals, in which, the male would be willing to die just to have sexual intercourse with a female. They would spend every bit of their energy trying to reach their goals and eventually, they would die of either being eaten by the female (for most of the case) or because of an extreme lethargy and multiorgan failures. Yes, you read it right. They die because they were too tired, humping females for the sake of having children. Sounds dreaded, right?

Any Time, Any Place, You Name It

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Picture By Eric Kilby - Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Ever wondered if depression or in general, being stressed out can be treated with a good sexual intercourse? We know that several species of apes are violent; they can hurt people around them when they were stressed out by any changes related to their environment (including when they feel threatened). Among them, there is a species of ape which can be considered quite peaceful compared to the other due to the fact that (and this is highly speculative) they were having sexual intercourse more than a human's sex addict do in a day. I was talking about one of the two species of ape in which exhibit a 98% similarities with our DNA, the bonobo (the other one is chimpanzees). Once, we thought we are the only creature which is capable of performing some foreplays and sexual techniques to make the intercourse rather entertaining, but bonobos have long been practising this kind of sexual repertoire. They would kiss, performing oral sex, have sex in multiple positions and some really do involve in polyamory (love more than one partner) and homosexuality.

For some, meeting new people can be quite distressful especially for those who have a certain degree of social phobia, but in bonobo's culture, greetings can be extended via sexual means i.e. if you are a bonobo, you might want to feel up the new people, kiss them or go straight away to intercourse instead. They seem to be one of the few animals in the animal kingdom which treated sexual intercourse as an entertainment rather than as a tool for reproductive purposes.

No description, academic or otherwise, can quite do justice to the comedy that is bonobo sex. On a hilarity scale of one to ten, most animal sex trends quickly toward ten. Bonobo sex goes to eleven. Throughout the day, males and females, adolescents and elders alike greet one another sexually for apparently almost any reason—and do so with everything from a quick feel, to porn-style choreographies, to elaborately athletic couplings.

Source

Imagine saying "good morning" to your female friends by grabbing their breast, you will surely get a slap or worst, caught for a sexual harassment act as soon as you committed it but in bonobo's culture, that's relatively light and normal. If a family of bonobos decided to visit another family of bonobos, they would have a freaking orgy! Generally, bonobos have sex more than humans in a day, but bonobos in captivity have sex more frequently than the one living in the wild. Talk about conveniences. I guess they were bored and sexual intercourse is rather fun than sitting around, doing nothing.

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Picture Source - Pixabay (CC0)

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Homosexual acts are quite common among bonobos, especially male bonobos, in which they would perform an act which the gay community called as frottage (only they do it bareback) as a form of greeting or to signal their own desire of having sexual intercourse with one another. It's a pretty common behaviour and most of the time, the other potential partner would accept and they would do it. It's pretty much easy for them to have sex and being true to one partner is rare or perhaps, have never been witnessed among bonobos. A healthy adult bonobo would have sex with a female (or male) and then move on to the next without any sign or act of jealousy which might be done or shown by the previous sexual partner.

Even though some people would have expected chimpanzees to behave in such a way because we do share the same percentage of DNA similarities, there is a difference between bonobos and chimpanzees in terms of the timing of sexual intercourse. A male chimpanzee seems to be particular about the female's menstrual cycle and they would often check it by inserting a finger into the female's genital and smell it. If the time is right, a sexual intercourse would take place (consent is irrelevant to them) but if not, then the male would leave; they seem to be only interested when the female is the most fertile hence they might have done it for the sake of reproduction. Male bonobos, on the other hand, would visit their females and have sex with them regardless of their phases of menstrual cycles without any hesitation. Sexual intercourse is a form of greeting to them and it is rude to not act accordingly when meeting with friends or even a stranger. Hell, they would do it with a chimpanzee if they want to greet them. This has been proven by a couple of situations whereby they put a male bonobo and a female chimpanzee close to each other in two separate cages; the male bonobo would have come and signalled its desire to have intercourse a couple of times a day and the female chimpanzee would respond mostly by rubbing "it".

Don't Stop Til You Drop

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Picture Source - Pixabay (CC0)

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If you think that sexual intercourse (or anything related to it) can be adopted by every single species of animals on this planet to reduce their own stree-related thingy (like bonobos), you might want to reconsider that statement. There are some animals (particularly male species) which felt pressured to perform even in their best general state of health, as committing to an act of sexual intercourse is like inviting death to their own doorsteps. They felt pressured to ensure the continuity of their own species when they know that they will either end up being eaten or in this case, die of an extreme exhaustion because of sexual intercourse; the animal in which I'm talking about here is the Antechinuses, one of the most popular tiny marsupial, especially the male, as they engage in a situation which is called as the suicidal reproduction. They will literally die (up to 7 days) after mating with countless of female Antechinuses. Regardless, they enjoy it (I hope so).

Food or sex? Which one would you give up first if you are asked to choose only one option between the two. For Antechinuses, foods are important, even more than sexual intercourse, so if foods are abundance, they will prefer to chug themselves with a lot of calories instead of spending them. The problem is, during the winter, foods are scarce so they will spend most of their time, humping females for 14 hours straight, without rest, which is generally caused by an elevated level of testosterone, making them horny and competitive with the other male Antechinuses to compete with each other; I presumed they want to prove their sexual prowess by subjecting females to a 14 hours of intense naked yum-yum moment. Often a single female will have sex with a few males and the number of child that can be conceived by them will depends on the number of their available teat (usually between 4-6 teats).

The thing is, ovulation in a female does not take place during the breeding season. They have a specialised organ which is capable of storing all of the deposited semens of the male Antechinuses so that it can be used after the breeding season (the time when they were ovulating). In a sense, we can say that, the male Antechinus will try hard to deposit whatever things they have as an investment during the winter. 7 to 12 days after the extreme sexual ritual, male Antechinuses will experience an abrupt drop in testosterone level which would result in diminished immune system making them prone to get various kind of infections that would kill them either by symptoms that they were experiencing or worst, multiorgans failure. They would suffer from physical and chemical exhaustion that will sometimes lead to dire consequences which include internal bleeding and stroke. That was pretty gruesome, is it not?

Why are they doing this? When the first time I read about Antechinuses, I was a little bit shocked; I thought our main priority as a living creature (humans and non-humans alike) is to survive but in this case, their priority is to ensure their generation would not diminished hence sacrificing themselves is a necessary step. It is also one of the reasons why this species of animals is currenlly not threatened by extinction, even with a relatively high rate of mortality among male Antechinuses. Good story, but still, it is quite scary if you have an urge to not stop until eventually you drop dead, trying to satisfy whatever you perceived as good for the future of your species. Scary indeed.

Five Days Of Pleasure. Or Is It Pain?

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Picture Source - Pixabay (CC0)

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This animal might have been called as the king of the jungle, but only a few of us knew that they were the king of their own bed as well (yeah, I'm referring to the one with the mane of course). If you were impressed by someone who can have sex for at least 8 times a day, now try to imagine 250 times (minimum) in 5 days, which means, they are practically a sexual beast. Well, lions are not the only group of big cats that seems to have an impressive capability in performing sexual intercourse, leopards practised the same ritual as well. Unlike human females who will produce an egg every 28 days that will either being used or wasted, leopards and lions have the capability to control their own ova production in a phase that we called as the oestrus. Basically it is the time when female lions or leopards would have a sufficient level of hormones to produce eggs for reproduction.

Oestrus phase in lions and leopards would usually be accompanied by a few physiological changes that would increase the chances of them being laid by their male counterparts. Their urine will start to emit a certain smell which can be recognised by the specialised sensory organ called organ of Jacobson located in a gland of the male lions and leopards palates. It is important for the female to give some sort of signal to the male because unlike chimpanzees, male big cats wouldn't have any relevant method to know whether or not their females were fertile or not. Female lions would mark their own territory by urinating a few times more frequent than usual to give a strong sexual scent only this time, their objective is not only to keep other animals away, but to attract a potential suitor as well. Clever, aren't they?

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Picture Source - Pixabay (CC0)

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So, what about the female's freedom to choose their own partner? What if a lion from another pride smell those urines, would they be a worthy suitor? Well, it is reasonable to think that, the male lion of that particular pride would be the factor why sexual intercourse between a male and a female lion is just between their own pride and not with the other. The female lion also will have the capability to determine whether or not the male lion in her pride is worthy of her eggs or not. That is something that can't be determined by us just yet as it involves their own instincts and probably some intrinsic factors that are yet to be discovered by us. If the male lion is weak, then, the female lion would be less fertile than if the male lion is worthy. This is to ensure that their cubs receive the best care before they can be independent from their own mother. If the male lion is weak, then, there will be a greater chance that they will get ousted by another male lion which would overtake the pride. The first thing that the new leader would do is to kill every cubs that are born from the previous leader genetic materials. If it comes to that, then the effort of enduring pain for five days is wasted.

Did I mentioned it was painful for the female just now? Yes, it is. To stimulate the production of ova among female lions, there seems to be some kind of structure that kinda look like a barb located at the tip of the male lion's penis that would have retracted and cause pain during the sexual intercourse; female lions would often react aggressively to this. They have to endure this painful process for 5 days due to the fact that lions and leopards have weak sperms. They would have to mate as often as they can to increase the chances of the female lion to conceive their child which would be the pride of their own pride.

References And Further Reading Materials

• Our Orgiastic Future. Retrieved on August 18th, 2018.
• New to nature No 139: Antechinus arktos. Retrieved on August 18th, 2018.
• The Secrets Behind The Big Cats' Mating. Retrieved on August 18th, 2018.
• Animals Who Just Love Having Sex . Retrieved on August 18th, 2018.

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