A new exhibit at New York's Museum of Sex seeks to expose the hidden sex lives of animals, and some of its themes may be shocking to prudes. As the exhibit shows (graphically), animals engage in diverse, unconventional acts of sex, and sex plays a much larger role in many animal societies than serving merely as a means of reproduction.
But Andrew, you told me that baby pandas came from marshmallow trees!
I'm going to put the rest of this post (And steamy pics. Steamy, that is, if monkey sex is your thing) below the fold, so as not to upset our readers who peruse Zooillogix as a family.
Here's the opening lines of the press release issued by the Museum of Sex:
"A male bonobo shrewdly soliciting sex in exchange for sugar cane. Two female bonobos blissfully engaged in genital-to-genital rubbing. A male and a female white-tailed deer in the middle of having sex only to have a second male eagerly join them for a threesome..."
I represent Antarctica; she was raised out of Finland.
While this language paints the exhibit as an animal porn extravaganza, the actual work is done in a much more scientifically banal manor (though there is, apparently, one sculpture of two dolphins engaging in an act via a blow hole that may cause "Flipper" fans to get a little agitated). The exhibits follow the lead of Stanford Evolutionary Biologist Joan Roughgarden (hotty), who has long argued that reproduction is not the only "natural" purpose of sex.
You can imagine where it goes from here...He fixes the cable?
For example, we all know that vertebrate life would collapse if sex for reproduction ceased, but did you know that some species would perish if they didn't engage in playful, "non-reproductive" sex as well? Even, in some cases, when the sex is homosexual in nature? In many animal societies, sex is the glue (no pun intended) that keeps intricate social structures intact, protecting them from predators, disease, and one another.
Ladies...
Andrew and I have not yet visited the Museum of Sex to see this exhibit, but it is getting rave reviews. From the homosexual necrophiliac duck, to panda porno movies, to koalas with venereal diseases it's supposed to have it all. Unfortunately for Andrew, the exhibit does little to unstigmatize relations between humans and lobsters...
The Sex Lives of Animals
July 24, 2008 - Spring 2009
233 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York
Sunday - Friday: 11am - 6:30pm
Saturday: 11am - 8pm
Life Science
Comments
A great many species have been observed to masturbate. I always wanted to ask bluenoses to explain that to us.
Posted by: Bill the Cat | July 28, 2008 6:11 PM
t\Their masturbating bonobo is a baboon.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | July 28, 2008 9:07 PM
Hee hee! You said, 'blow hole'!
Posted by: julia | July 31, 2008 5:03 PM
So that's where they got the expression "blow job"!
The deer stack reminds me of the linked big-rig truck cabs that you sometimes see on the highway. My ex and I used to absolutely HOWL with laughter every time we saw one go by - do they give birth to little pickup trucks later?
As for the baboon...... been a while, eh guy?
I really wish I lived closer to NYC!
Posted by: themadlolscientist, FCD | August 2, 2008 3:07 PM
Another myth is gone
Posted by: Dorothy | August 4, 2008 4:23 AM
Wow .. thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Animals | November 24, 2008 6:41 PM
Nonhumans do not engage in "unconventional acts of sex." Only humans have such bizarre things as conventions. Your speciesism is shining through.
Posted by: L | April 17, 2009 5:44 PM