DemonKia
Posts: 5521
Joined: 10/13/2007 From: Chico, Nor-Cali Status: offline
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I'm guessing that the giraffes was this: Another function of necking is sexual, in which two males caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax. Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling.[21] In one study, up to 94% of observed mounting incidents took place between two males. The proportion of same sex activities varied between 30 and 75%, and at any given time one in twenty males were engaged in non-combative necking behaviour with another male. Only 1% of same-sex mounting incidents occurred between females.[22] Birds is a good one, tho' it's almost exclusively genital-to-genital activity (duct to duct rubbing), I'd be fascinated to see something about oral sex in birds. & I didn't turn up the specific whatever you meant with penguins, would you be so kind as elucidate. & by sea mammals are we talking cetaceans, sure, that's another grouping that does seem to engage in recreational sexuality. I don't think that's so much the case with the pinnipeds, I couldn't turn up any obvious suspects in a quickie wiki look . . .. . Lots of frottage-like activities with most of these. I'm wondering if anyone knows of any oral, anal, or masturbatory sex to climax in non-primates. (& the chimps are big on the frottage kinds of stuff, I'm not entirely clear what other activities they engage in . . . . .) So. We've got one class (birds), & a handful of mammalian species. All vertabrates, all social critters. & the recreational sexual activity definitely seems to be an expression of social interaction. That giraffe example strikes me as a rather extreme example of 'male bonding' . . .. . . .. Versus the rest. Reptiles. Fish. Amphibians. Invertebrates, which would number the majority of species. Not a heck of a lot of ability to engage in anything that would approximate the sex-for-pure-pleasure alone thing that I think is actually something special about humans. (I know it's currently not polite or vogue or something to think that we humans are anything special, eh, well .. . . . ) Huge swathes of those species engage in sexual reproduction but without anything resembling coitus, doing things like exchanging sperm packets, or laying eggs & leaving them to be fertilized separately by a male . . . . . & there is a chunk of lower order critters that engage in asexual or non-sexual reproduction, such as amoebas splitting, or plants' ability to essentially clone the host plant thru broken off bits taking root . . . . . . & then we get into ratios, how much reproductive versus recreational we're talking about. Going back to that wiki above about the giraffes we have this: Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling.[21] In one study, up to 94% of observed mounting incidents took place between two males. So that's a roughly 1:17 ratio of reproductive sex to recreational sex. By way of comparison, the average modern human female in an industrial country will have somewhere on the order of 2 births over her lifespan (we'll coin a concept called one's sexual lifespan, which we'll arbitrarily call 18 to 78, just cuz -- 60 years of potential sexual activity) . . . . Further we'll use some common numbers to establish some parameters. Average of sexual activity of anywhere from once a week to once a day, to be both kinda conservative in estimation & to get some varied curves going on to see the bigger picture. *whips out calculator, thankfully opts to do calcs offscreen* 1X week: 2 in 3120 sexual acts are reproductive; 2X week: 2 in 6240 sexual acts are reproductive; 3X week: 9360 sexual acts are reproductive . . . . . (Huh, I'd never actually cranked out a set of numbers, I just had a feel for how the numbers would go.) If we go with one sexual act per day, we get: 2 in 21,900 sexual acts are reproductive . . . . . & since I'm gonna call masturbation a sexual activity (& a heavily recreational one) for the purposes of this distinction between recreational & reproductive, I think the above frame of numbers is not too terribly inaccurate . . . . . . . Them's some pretty impressive stats . . . .. . I'd be interested in seeing some estimations of the ratio of recreational to reproductive activities in other primates, birds, or the cetaceans . . . . . . . quote:
ORIGINAL: Darcyandthedark quote:
ORIGINAL: DemonKia (Given all of that, if anyone of you brainiacs (meant most sincerely, thank you for noticing) out there know of any non-primate species that engage in sexual activities outside of penile-vaginal coitus, please, bring them to my attention . . . . & I'm specifically not referring to those pre-coital mating behaviors that are part of getting the female receptive to the immediate fertilization opportunity, I'm speaking of sexual activities that take the place of reproductive sexual acts . . . . . . ) Birds. Penguins are always a good example. Giraffes. Many sea mammals. the.dark.
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