Do animals have sex for pleasure?

Brut America

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

Transcript

00:00This 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.

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