Coercive sex among animals  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Controversial interpretations and implications aside (see Sociobiological theories of rape), sex in a forceful or apparently coercive context has also been documented in a variety of species. A notable example is bottlenose dolphins, where at times, a pod of bachelor males will 'corner' a female '...although what happens once the males have herded in a female, and whether she goes for one or all of them, is not yet known: the researchers have yet to witness a dolphin copulation.'

The behaviour is also common in some arachnids (spiders such as the black widow), notably those whose females eat the males during sex if not tricked with food and/or tied down with threads, and in some herbivorous herd species or species where males and females are very different in size, where the male dominates sexually by sheer force and size.

Some species of birds appear to combine sexual intercourse with apparent violent assault; these include ducks, geese, and white-fronted bee-eaters. According to Emlen and Wrege (1986) forced copulations occur in this socially nesting species, and females must avoid the unwelcome attention of males as they emerge from their nest burrows or they are forced to the ground and mated with. Apparently, such attacks are made preferentially on females who are laying and who may thus mother their offspring as a result.

In 2007, research suggested that in the Acilius genus of water beetles (also known as "diving beetles"), an "evolutionary arms race" between the genders means that there is no courtship system for these beetles. "It's a system of rape. But the females don't take things quietly. They evolve counter-weapons." Cited mating behaviours include males suffocating females underwater till exhausted, and allowing only occasional access to the surface to breathe for up to six hours (to prevent them breeding with other males), and females which have a variety of body shapings (to prevent males from gaining a grip). Foreplay is "limited to the female desperately trying to dislodge the male by swimming frantically around."

Charles Siebert reports in his New York Times article Elephant Crackup? that:

Since the early 1990s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behaviour, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region."

This interpretation of the elephants' behaviour is, however, disputed by Rob Slotow, one of the original study's authors. He states there was "nothing sexual about these attacks".

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Coercive sex among animals" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools