My roommate asked me if animals masturbate. She hasn’t entirely forgiven me for the dolphins.
Today’s Moment of Science… Monkey spanking.
It’s not entirely clear how many animals have sex purely for pleasure. It’s likely just a rumor that the list is limited to various primates, pigs, and dolphins (not all together, lest it’s funded by NASA). Quite a few species are known to take their pleasure into their own hands, paws, or trunks.
Walruses typically flop onto their side and engage their boner with their ample flippers. The walrus’ baculum, aka the dick bone, is 22 inches long. There’s a video of that one walrus giving himself a blowjob, which prompts the question… how different would your life be with a 22 inch baculum and idk like four fewer ribs?
How do you jerk off an elephant? With a lot of lube, I would imagine. A commonly reported way males do this is rubbing their junk up against anything they can (a large rock will do). Or striking it against their belly in a pretty literal act of self abuse. Females in captivity will get all ‘can I give you a hand up in there’ with their gal pals and have been witnessed engaging in mutual masturbation using their trunks.
Our fellow primates are unsurprisingly horny buggers. Some ape and monkey species not only masturbate, they make dildos. Bonobos, perhaps the most amorous of our cousins, are into anything that involves some junk touching. Bisexuality is pretty normal in males and females. Both intercourse and non-reproductive sexual play time (including oral sex and french kissing) can be communication tools for keeping the peace, not entirely unlike in human relationships.
Dolphins: good for tourism, heavy on the perversion. If they can wrap their dicks around it, they’ll use it for a thrill. Electric eel fleshlights are amongst their favorite me-time toys.
Small iguanas are known to jerk off, but it’s tactical (use that excuse and tell me how it works). They’ll get themselves worked up and ready to go before mating so that they’re able to ejaculate quickly. They’re likely to get swatted off by larger iguanas, so it’s best to get in there fast for their best shot at baby iguana making. It’s less masturbating and more fluffing, but the term ‘auto-fluffer’ is conspicuously absent in reproductive biology despite my letters, so.
A lot of animals sit atop jerk-off mountain and can do what so many teenage boys have tried and failed to do; stick it in their own mouths. With such sharp teeth they have, brown bears bravely gargle their own penis. The Cape ground squirrel only weighs about a pound and has testicles roughly the size of golf balls, or about 20% the length of its body. I’m pretty sure they figured out autofellatio just because they needed to see why everyone kept applauding when they walked by.
Some species of bats, when they’re not spreading the next plague, also give themselves the old mouth hug. I’m just saying, leave these little guys alone to suck their own dicks in peace, huh? The next coronavirus can stay right where it belongs: drying on a bat’s pubes, as nature intended.
This has been your Moment of Science, just letting you know it’s probably for the best that we didn’t discuss the sea otters tonight.
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