Do Animals Have Sex For Pleasure?

Brut India

"Animals have done it all." Oral sex, masturbation, homosexual sex ... This evolutionary biologist is showing just how widespread sexual diversity is among animals.

Transcript

00:00We haven't invented anything.

00:06We just haven't.

00:07You know, animals have done it all.

00:09There is oral sex, for example, which is often seen in nature, is seen in bats.

00:15And when they do, the success of pregnancy actually increases.

00:21Some fish, the males have little whiskers in their mouth that they use to tickle the

00:25female genitalia for the exact same reason.

00:37Dolphins have sex all the time.

00:39They have sex not just males with females, but also females with females and males with

00:43males.

00:44Females have been observing rubbing each other's clitorises with their snouts and their flippers.

00:51And they have also been observed masturbating, which basically involves them finding objects

00:56on the forest floor that they can rub up against.

00:59We did this study looking at the dolphin clitoris, the morphology of the dolphin clitoris.

01:04What we found was very definite evidence that the clitoris seems to be functioning for pleasure.

01:21The fact that animals have sex outside of just purely reproductive purposes would generally

01:27be a good indication that there's another goal to that sexual interaction, right?

01:32Many people have argued that they're practicing for the real thing.

01:36It might be also some kind of social cohesion.

01:38Bonobos are apes, close relatives of chimpanzees, and they have a very female-oriented society.

01:47And female bonobos have been seen having a lot of homosexual sex.

01:52These sexual interactions help to solidify bonding between females because they cooperate

01:57together quite a bit.

01:59And they have very well-developed clitorises.

02:01I know that they certainly seem to have pleasure during sexual interactions, like in many,

02:18many primates that have been studied in the lab.

02:21You know, females, you can observe them, they're grimacing, they're vocalizing, they're rolling

02:26their eyes, they're curling their toes.

02:28So having all sorts of reactions that are consistent with a pleasure response and even

02:34orgasm.

02:35So homosexuality in nature is super widespread.

02:43We have known this for a very long time.

02:47In fact, you know, there is this famous explorer who went down to the Antarctica and he watched

02:55the penguins behaving.

02:56This was in the 1800s.

02:58And he came back absolutely shocked to find all this diversity of sexual behavior.

03:04And so he never reported it.

03:05He like was so shocked because culturally, of course, and socially back then it was terrible.

03:11And I think that that's what's happened with many researchers.

03:13In the 90s, we had this beautiful book called Biological Exuberance that sort of brought

03:19it all back to everyone's face to say, oh, you think homosexual behavior is weird?

03:25Look how many animals are having it.

03:26And the examples in that book include absolutely every taxa of animals from insects, fish,

03:33birds, mammals, primates, everybody.

03:37So the question is almost not, you know, is homosexual behavior common?

03:42But it's like, who's not having it?

03:44Because it seems like everyone is having it, honestly.

03:51Male and female is just one possible outcome of evolution.

03:56There are fungi that have 10,000 mating types.

04:00They're like male, female, what's that?

04:01Of course, sex change, you know, the blue-headed rats are one of the best known example.

04:07You have one dominant male and he controls a whole group of females.

04:11But if that male dies, the next largest female becomes the male in the group.

04:18She's like, where's the male?

04:19There's no male.

04:20She's not going to be the male.

04:21And she starts biting everyone, becoming super aggressive.

04:25And then in a matter of days, she goes from being a female with ovaries and eggs to being

04:31a male with testes and sperm.

04:39Males should be more eager and females should be more coy and that females, you know, have

04:44to be seduced and that they don't want sex as much as males do.

04:48So that was kind of like the old story, but a much different story has emerged more recently.

04:54So for example, with birds, we know that females are actively very sexual and they're just

05:00as you would expect with males, that when it is advantageous to have more sex, they

05:05will try to have more sex as well.

05:15People will only learn what they're exposed to.

05:18And if they never hear these topics talked about in the context of, of course, this is

05:23what animals do, this is totally normal, then they're not aware of it.

05:29But it's also, as I was saying, the fault of the scientist to some degree, because when

05:35we have seen this behavior in the past, we've been very reluctant to talk about it.

05:40The other problem is that then even when that information has become available, it's not

05:44widespread.

05:45I feel that animals are perfectly capable of having complex emotional and inner lives.

05:56I think that the more we go forward, the more we're going to be hearing about this amazing

06:01diversity of sexual strategies in nature.

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