10 Strange Animal-Sex Facts

As a biology student, I've run into a lot of strange facts about animals. There are lyre birds that can imitate the sound of a camera, car alarm, and chainsaw. Jellyfish are, in effect, immortal. When caterpillars metamorph into butterflies, they completely liquefy their existing cells and re-build themselves.

But the strange facts I retain the most (perhaps because I'm a naughty, naughty minded lady) are strange animal-sex facts.
Everyone knows animals have sex. They have straight sex, they have (a surprising amount) of gay sex, they have sex to reproduce, and they have sex for fun.
So- enjoy my list of 10 STRANGE ANIMAL-SEX FACTS. In no particular, or sensical order.

1) Elephants have prehensile penises as long as their legs. PREHENSILE. I've seen them in person and it's just as terrifying as you're imagining. (By the way, click that link at the risk of your own mental health.) If you think about it, it makes sense. Once a guy elephant gets up on top of a lady elephant there isn't a whole lot of room for re-adjusting.

2) Speaking of penises, most marsupials have two-pronged penises. Why? Because female marsupials have two vaginal canals and two uteri that connect to one opening (the cloaca). This includes possums, kangaroos and koalas.

3) MORE WEIRD PENISES. Male ducks have counter-clockwise spiraling penises that are (based on this video- again, watch at your own risk) terrifyingly large compared to their body size. They also routinely rape female ducks with this terrifying corkscrew penis.

4) Who wants babies from a rapist-duck-dad? NOT LADY DUCKS.  In order to combat this forced copulation/insemination, female ducks have evolved a clockwise corkscrew vagina and, to quote the scientist doing these studies on duck genitalia, have "blind pockets that prevent full eversion of the male penis" which make it "difficult for males to inseminate females close to the sites of fertilization and sperm storage". In short, rape happens so often in ducks that females have evolved their vaginas to prevent getting pregnant from it.

5) On to something a little more pleasant. Female pigs have a clitoris that's located inside their vagina, which makes it infinitely easier for the boar to please his lady since it's REALLY difficult to do the come-hither finger thing with only two very stubby, unjointed toes.
I kid.
But actually, stimulation of the clitoris (through specially made pig vibrators, or a boar's penis) increases the production of piglets by up to six percent (this TED talk discusses this at around the 10 minute mark, and includes an instructional video).

6) On the topic of pigs, I'm sure you've heard that a pig's orgasm is 30 minutes long, which isn't EXACTLY true. The average, non-assisted, MALE pig's orgasm can last up to 15 minutes, but is usually shorter. However, if someone collecting the semen, um, re-starts the engine, it can in fact last up to 30 minutes. 

7) Finding Nemo was an excellent movie, but they made one mistake- after the mother's death, Marlin should have become, well...Marlena. Mrs. Nemo's parent. 
You see, clownfish have a matriarchal society. One female generally has several males around her, but only one breeds with her. If the female in the group dies, that breeding male becomes a female. 
Yep, clownfish are trans*.  

8) Bluegill sunfish, on the other hand, are cross-dressers. There are small males that have similar coloring to females, so when they swim near a cluster of eggs a big, manly, male bluegill is trying to fertilize, nobody complains. They then utilize their abnormally large testes and just shoot sperm everywhere, guaranteeing their genes will be passed on in at least a few of the eggs. This strategy is called "The Sneaky Fucker Strategy". Yes, really.

9) You know the standard baby-making process right? Sperm meets egg, egg becomes embryo, eventually there's a baby combining the DNA of both parents, right? Well...there is a hybrid species of salamander that is exclusively female. How do they reproduce, you ask? Well when a male from one of the species of salamanders that hybridized to create the all-female species mates with a female, his sperm basically triggers cell division without contributing DNA. These salamanders clone themselves with sperm.

10) Now, to finish this off with something properly terrifying that could be happening in your bed right now.
No, not you. 
Bedbugs. I'm going to tell you how bedbugs have sex.
So, male bedbugs have, well. Sword penises. And instead of fertilizing the female's eggs through her perfectly functional genital tract, he stabs her with his sword penis and ejaculates into her bloodstream.
The female has a gland specifically designed to capture the sperm and bring it into her reproductive system.
As if that wasn't freaky enough, sometimes bigger male bedbugs do this to other males. Why? Because the next time the smaller male mates with a female, some of the bigger male's sperm gets in there too.
 

The "sexy son" hypothesis, or, my biological excuse for putting up with an asshole for too long

Fairly recently, I came to the conclusion that I needed to go through with finally purging a toxic relationship from my life. This guy (#bigdrummerboy, if you are a Twitter follower) was someone that I met back in 2010 after a particularly traumatic breakup. At the time, my friends decided the best way to cheer me up was hot guys, and being the band nerds we are, they immediately carted me to the nearest place where a Drum Corps was holding a camp. (In case you doubt that DCI is full of some of the sexiest men I have ever met, here are some photographs of one of the Corps) So, as we're sitting in the stands of the local football stadium, my friends and I played the game of "pick your favorite" and quickly came to the conclusion that every single one of us thought a particular guy on the drumline was it. All seven of us agreed.

To shorten this story somewhat, he ended up approaching me later in the week and, suddenly, I was caught up in this maelstrom of sexuality that he exuded like other human beings "exude" carbon dioxide. I'm not even sure now, after I've eliminated him from my life, if I can explain my reaction to him in a way that doesn't make me sound mentally touched. The sexual tension was so think I couldn't think. I became a bundle of energy, a grouping of nerves, A VAGINA ATTACHED TO A BRAIN STEM.
Anecdote 1) I met up with him after one of their performances and as we were walking somewhere he jokingly lifted his shirt to show me "how much weight he's lost" and I literally lost the majority of my motor function. I was unable to walk, talk, or do anything but stare at his stomach until he put his shirt down.
Anecdote 2) At one point during a semi-public heavy petting session, I pulled his shirt up over his stomach and just...bit him. And growled. It was at this moment he pulled me close to him and said "Yeah. I know."

In short, we had a sexual/chemical/physical compatibility that you probably could have bottled and sold to porn stars as an enhancement drug.

Unfortunately, as I was to learn partially that summer, and learned again in the summer of 2012, this guy...seriously, folks, ladies in particular, learn from my mistakes and walk away from toxic assholes like this before you get as hurt as I did. Some of his crowning moments:
1) Despite the fact that I went down on him more times than I can count, I know exactly how many times he touched my vagina. He touched it twice. How did I think that was okay.
2) He (being on tour at the time) needed to use my computer to send some stuff for his study abroad program. Afterwards, I opened my computer to find that he had been, not emailing the forms, but looking at titty pictures that he had been emailed by four other girls who resided on various towns he would be visiting on his tour.
3) Finally, after spending over a month calling me "his girl", holding my hands, snuggling with me on his water breaks, kissing me randomly etc, he decided that I was "acting too girlfriend-y" and that I needed to stop. When I informed him that, to the best of my knowledge, we were just friends with benefits and I didn't want to date him, he smiled and put my hand on his cock before asking me if I felt generous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming he's the devil. I'm not even saying he's a bad person- but the way that he treated me was unacceptable and because of the sexual chemistry I was blinded to it. Even to this day, I catch myself thinking that maybe the sex is worth it. But it's not.

I needed an explanation- for my own piece of mind. I like to think of myself as an independent, aware woman who wants a companion that respects and treats her well- so why did I put up with him? Why was I still so attracted to him? And last fall, during an Animal Behavior class I was taking, an answer of sorts emerged from our studies of mating strategies.
There is this hypothesis that was proposed in 1979 by these guys called Weatherhead and Robinson. They mostly studied birds, who have the highest occurrence of monogamous couplings in nature. However, this hypothesis can be applied to almost any animal, including us big-brained bipeds.
I highly doubt you'll look up scientific literature (as people who are expecting the first published post here to be about fuckin', I don't blame you) but the general gist of the hypothesis is this:
Females are attracted to promiscuous males, even if they won't help with child rearing or resource providing, because those womanizing genes of his will raise the chances of her own male offspring spreading their (and, indirectly, her) DNA far and wide.

So I'll blame that.
Yeah.