Animal sexual behaviour
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species. Researchers have observed monogamy, promiscuity, sex between species, sexual arousal from objects or places, sex apparently via duress or coercion, copulation with dead animals, homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual sexual behaviour, and situational sexual behaviour and a range of other practices among animals other than humans. Related studies have noted diversity in sexed bodies and gendered behaviour, such as intersex and transgender animals.
The study of animal sexuality (and primate sexuality especially) is a rapidly developing field. It used to be believed that only humans and a handful of species performed sexual acts other than for procreation, and that animals' sexuality was instinctive and a simple response to the "right" stimulation (sight, scent). Current understanding is that many species believed monogamous have now been proven to be promiscuous or opportunistic in nature, a wide range of species appear both to masturbate and to use objects as tools to help them do so, in many species animals try to give and get sexual stimulation with others where procreation is not the aim, and homosexual behavior has now been observed among 1,500 species, and in 500 of those it is well documented.
In film
- Green Porno, a series of short films about animal mating, enacted by humans, airing on the Sundance Channel
- Acéra ou le bal des sorcières by Jean Painlevé on the sexual life of mollusks.
By species
See also
- Against Nature? An exhibition on animal homosexuality
- Animal behaviour
- Biology and sexual orientation
- Choice and sexual orientation
- Coercive sex among animals
- Courtship display
- Display (zoology)
- Ethology
- Freemartin (a female bovine with a masculinized brain which acts sexually as a male)
- Heterogametic sex
- List of animals displaying homosexual behaviour
- Love dart
- Mate desertion
- Mating
- Mating plug
- Nuptial gift (animal behavior)
- Panda pornography
- Pair bonding
- Prostitution among animals
- Pseudocopulation
- r/K selection theory
- Seasonal breeder
- Zoology
- Zoophilia
- Sexual coercion
- Sex steroid
- Sexual swelling
- Sexually dimorphic nucleus
- Traumatic insemination
See also Apophallation, Breeding pair, Bubble nest, Clasper, Drone (bee), Egg tossing (behavior), Epitoky, Koinophilia, Male accessory gland, Milt, Mouthbrooder, Ovoviviparity, Parental investment, Queen ant, Queen bee, Spawn (biology), Statoblast, Strobilation, Thelytoky, Vivipary.