Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Did you know?... The Interesting Fact Thread

Jinn · 07-26-2005, 07:43 AM

Dolphins AND bonobos, actually. And even that is a bit contrived:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/pleasure.htm

Quote:

Therefore, we say that we humans engage in "sex for pleasure" not just because sex is something we consider to "feel good," but because it meets the criterion specified above: both men and women willingly engage in sex even though neither one of them may know for certain that the woman is fertile, and even at times when fertilization is impossible (such as when the woman is already pregnant or is post-menopausal). We know that a few (and only a few) species other than humans behave in a manner consistent with our definition of "sex for pleasure." Female bonobos (also known as pygmy chimpanzees), for example, are receptive to sex for several weeks before and after ovulation, and male bonobos will engage in sex with them even though they know the females are not fertile. Dolphins, too, frequently mate even when the female is not fertile.

Of course, we have to make many seemingly artificial distinctions to arrive at our conclusion. Animals other than humans have no awareness that their sexual activities are connected with reproduction: They engage in sex because they're biologically driven to do so, and if the fulfillment of their urges produces a physical sensation we might appropriately call "pleasure," it isn't the least bit affected by the possibility (or impossibility) of producing offspring. We are also discounting cases in which animals do engage in sex even though reproduction is an impossibility, because we claim there are other "purposes" (of which the animals themselves are unaware) at play. (For example, the females of some species of birds will invite males to mate with them even after they have laid their eggs, but we ascribe a purpose to this behavior: this is a biological "trick" to fool males into caring for hatchlings they didn't father.) We also employ subjective terms such as "willingly" and "regularly" in claiming that bonobos and dolphins are the only other animals who "willingly (and regularly) engage in sex with each other even when there is no possibility that offspring will be produced as a result," and even then it may be the case that these species have some other "purpose" for doing so that we haven't yet discovered.

Perhaps the most important concept to be learned here is that although humans naturally tend to think of their behavior as "normal" and consider the habits of other animals to be departures from the norm, in many ways -- especially in our sexual behavior -- we are quite exceptional.