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On a gloomy November day at Southampton’s City Farm, the animals are busy with their daily activities. All of them have been rescued. There’s Penny the pig, a group of chickens who were once kept in battery farms, three pygmy goats, and Salvatore the cane snake. Salvatore’s bright orange and glossy appearance makes it seem like he’s radiating from the inside as he wraps around my arm in a loving and almost sensual embrace.

Each of these small wonders is unique in its own way, but the unassuming brown shells in the tank in the corner are particularly peculiar. I inquire of Hannah, who is responsible for them, “Who is in there?” She informs me that they are African land snails and that they have recently laid eggs. Interestingly, both snails were originally female, but due to being hermaphrodites, one has transitioned to male. This came as quite a shock.

Animals strike curious poses, sang the artist formerly known as Prince, and new research bears him out. A scientific report published last week, detailing how serotine bats enact non-penetrative sex rituals in a Dutch church, raises all manner of interesting questions about what animals get up to in pursuit of pleasure or the transmission of their genes.

Bats have demonstrated the first known instance of mammals mating without penetration. Researchers have been puzzled by the issue of male bats’ wider erect penises compared to female bats’ vaginas, which can make penetration difficult. However, it is now believed that semen is transferred through contact with the vulva.

It is intriguing information, but it is a common tendency for humans to believe that we are the only ones who come up with unique ways of engaging in sexual activities. However, cetaceans, with their large brains and skilled hunting techniques, display a wide range of creativity in their sexual behavior. For dolphins, this means finding ways to occupy themselves during their downtime. They have been observed engaging in fast-paced mating up to three times in just five minutes while swimming together, often in large groups – essentially a moving mass orgy.

Dolphins seem to have a strong inclination towards engaging in sexual activities, as evidenced by observations of male dolphins inserting their penises into various animals such as sharks, turtles, and even dead fish. Their larger relatives in the cetacean family also exhibit similar behaviors. From my observations at Cape Cod, I have witnessed pods of the highly endangered north Atlantic right whales – enormous creatures measuring 18 meters in length – engaging in prolonged foreplay sessions lasting three hours or more.

Surprisingly, the most remarkable aspect is that they enter shallow water to mate, twisting around each other’s smooth black bodies and touching with their rubbery fins. The scene appears tranquil until one realizes that, in their drive to reproduce, two male whales may enter a female simultaneously. Male right whales have the largest testes, weighing close to a ton, of any animal on the planet; their penises can reach up to three meters in length. As I observed this grand display of desire from a deserted beach, I noticed a grey seal at the water’s edge, also observing but hesitant to return to the sea due to the rambunctious cetaceans.

Primates, whales, and dolphins are the species most closely related to humans in terms of evolution. In his novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville cleverly acknowledged the title’s double meaning by pointing out that unlike most other animals, whales mate face to face. He delicately described this behavior as a human-like salute exchanged between affectionate whales. This phrase was brought to mind while observing a large pair of sperm whales in the Indian Ocean, joined together belly to belly, swimming unconcernedly under our small fishing boat.

Whales and primates, including bonobos, challenge the conventional distinctions between sexual, reproductive, cultural, and social behaviors. Similar to humans, they differentiate between sex and reproduction. Bonobos utilize sexual interactions to alleviate social conflicts and readily display same-sex behavior, similar to whales.

Male orcas frequently engage in penetrative sexual behavior with each other, likely as a way to prepare for mating with females. But what do we truly understand about this behavior? The famous artistic duo Gilbert & George were intrigued when I informed them of the existence of homosexual behavior among whales. According to renowned orca researcher Dr Lance Barrett-Lennard, his 126 field trips have shown a prevalence of homosexual behavior, with heterosexual mating being a rare occurrence. It appears that queerness is commonplace among whales.

Adult male sperm whales have been observed using their pectoral and dorsal fins to interact with each other in social groups. However, they also use their erect penises as a way to greet and embrace other whales, potentially including their offspring. Interestingly, these whales were given their name by human hunters who mistakenly believed that the milky oil that they produced was semen.

The sea’s fluid and idyllic nature allows for transformations in sex and gender. It is where we originate from, and we are beginning to understand that humans may not be the ultimate product of evolution. Octopuses, on the other hand, represent a different branch of evolution. For these creatures with brains in each arm, sex takes on a unique form and their limbs can function independently. This is why the famous artwork by Japanese artist Hokusai depicts interspecies sex between a human and an octopus using its searching and penetrating tentacles. However, there is a high mortality rate in cephalopod sex. Female octopuses exhibit semelparity, meaning they can mate with multiple males but only live through one pregnancy before dying.

The book “Other Minds” by Peter Godfrey-Smith describes how cuttlefish engage in intriguing behaviors, such as mating in a deliberate and graceful manner that resembles a court dance. The male cuttlefish will use his fourth arm to transfer a sperm packet to a designated spot beneath the female’s beak after a moment of stillness.

The seashore is also a stage for these displays. Crepidula fornicata, also known as slipper limpets, form stacks of seven or more shells by attaching to each other. As they grow, their sex changes, with the oldest and largest females at the bottom and younger males at the top. If a female dies, a male will transform and take her place.

At the other end of the marine scale, walruses possess penis bones, known as baculum, handy for alleviating the effort of intercourse when you weigh one and a half tonnes. Many mammals have this attribute, but the walrus baculum is by far the largest at 60cm long, a kind of penile counterpart to the formidable tusks that lend them the majestic air of Arctic sex gods.

According to Richard Sabin from the Natural History Museum, who revealed a bone to me from the museum’s hidden collection, the baculum is responsible for enabling male walruses to maintain insertion until the sperm reaches its intended target. This is a crucial factor when the female is only half the weight of the male.

Tim Dee, an author and avid observer of unusual bird behavior, finds great joy in the quirks of avian life. From his garden in South Africa, he shares stories of the peculiar ostriches that possess a rare pseudo-penis resembling a limp slab of pink flesh. He also notes that South African penguins engage in public mating displays, with their fellow penguins acting as disapproving onlookers.

According to Dee, the most unusual bird mating behavior can be seen in Britain through dunnocks. These seemingly innocent and old-fashioned birds may appear to simply peck around in the shrubbery, but they actually participate in unconventional sexual activities.

Dee mentions that male birds peck at the females’ cloacas, which is a single orifice used for both waste elimination and reproduction, similar to echidnas and duck-billed platypuses. This behavior is done to encourage the female to release the sperm of a previous partner and replace it with his own. Dee compares this behavior to the strange mating scenes depicted in Luis Buñel’s 1972 film, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.”

Renowned bird expert and Arctic tour leader, Jim Wilson, also finds the intricacies of duck reproduction fascinating – particularly in terms of reproductive anatomy. According to Wilson, female muscovy ducks have developed vaginas with clockwise spirals to prevent unwanted advances from males with their large, corkscrew-shaped penises. This mismatch in direction makes forced copulation difficult for both parties.

One of Wilson’s favourite stories is of the female red-necked phalarope – unusually brightly coloured in a world where the males are mostly the flashy ones. After mating and laying her eggs in Arctic breeding grounds, she leaves her partner to look after them and flies off to mate with at least one other male, maybe more. It depends on her mood, I guess.

However, let us not disregard the fact that humans are also animals, and engaging in sexual activity brings out our animalistic and transformative nature. In W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, there is a striking scene where the usually detached writer gazes down from a cliff during a long walk on the Suffolk coast and witnesses a couple engaging in sexual intercourse as one living organism, writhing “like a large mollusk washed up on the shore…a singular being, a multi-limbed, two-headed monster that had drifted in from the deep sea, the last of an exceptional species”. When viewed objectively, it must be acknowledged that sex is a highly improbable occurrence, regardless of the species involved.

Source: theguardian.com