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Top 10 List of Alternative Sexualities
Because you wanted more Top Ten Lists
The Top Ten List of Alternative Sexualities
Now this is a post that really deserves the Mature Content LJ tags. And I'm including sexual behaviour, adaptations, reproductive genetics, and everything else under the wide heading of Sex. I probably won't cover much merely heterosexual happywriggles that use anatomy you aren't used to ( i.e. Velvet Worms and their face full of hypodermic penises and corrosive sperm; or the way giant octopuses stuff a meter-long cigar full of sperm up the female's nose, where it explodes. I'll probably save those for another Top Ten List - Detachable Penis and 9 Other Ways To Make Your Love-Life Seem Boring)
And I owe a debt here to Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation - the definitive guide to the evolutionary biology of sex by Olivia Judson. Highly recommended, very informative, and very funny. There was a documentary series too. It was a musical.
Anyway...
#10 - Sex Addicts
The drive to reproduce is so fundamental that most species will go to pretty ridiculous lengths to achieve it ( and it's difficult to deny that an amorous tortoise is ridiculous. They're such notorious sex maniacs there's a joke about it in a Terry Pratchett novel ). One way evolution has done this is by making sex as enjoyable as possible, despite all the dangers. In quite a few species the males will throw all other concerns to the wind in his single-minded pursuit of Nookie.
One such sexual athlete is the Antechinus, a genus of small marsupial carnivore that spends the last two weeks of its life in a non-stop sexual frenzy, racing from female to female in its desperate attempt to impregnate as many of them as possible in marathon 12-hour sessions, before dropping dead of exhaustion. Quite possibly the Australian Bush rings with doppler-shifted screams of "SEEEEEEEEXXXXXXX!!!!!!!" zooming this way and that in the undergrowth.
#9 - Necrophilia
I'm not ranking this one higher because it's hardly a productive strategy. In a lot of cases, it's the result of the male being too lust-crazed to care that the object of his affections is still alive, let alone the right species or gender ( as was the case with the now famous mallard that won Kees Moeliker an Ig Nobel Prize, or the unfortunate goldfish that get strangled to death by amorous frogs and horny toads ).
However - bacteria have sex too, exchanging genes with their neighbours via narrow tubes. But they'll also incorporate genes from viruses, and scavenge genes from any dead bacteria they stumble across. Thus neatly combining promiscuity, bestiality, and necrophilia into one handy package.
#8 - Homosexuality
Another behaviour that at first glance seems pretty counter-productive. But it's also very widespread. Muff-diving hedgehogs, lesbian seagulls, gay manatees... It's all almost old hat, these days.
Still, it seems to work out OK for some species. The Whiptail lizard Cnemidophorus neomexicanus seems to doing fine as dedicated lesbians. Indeed, they don't have much choice since there aren't any males in the species, but their lesbian couplings still ensure larger eggs in whoever is playing the female role ( Hot Lizard-girl on Lizard-girl Action!)
And then there's Australia's own Black Swan, just one more discovery on top of trees that drop branches not leaves, fruit with the seed outside, giant bouncing two-headed rats the size of sheep, and beavers with beaks, that had Europe saying "Find some strong drugs too, did you?"
Gay Black Swan couples are highly successful parents. And they do that by using a surrogate mother or by forcibly adopting every cygnet on the lake, chasing off the real parents, and monopolising the entire area. They're large and aggressive enough to be very good foster parents, too. So their genetic contribution ( at least in the later case ) is zero, but without them only a fraction of that year's cygnets would survive.
#7 - Transexuality, Hermaphroditism, & More Than 4 Genders
And why stick with one kind of genitalia anyway? Changing sexes is well-known, especially in fish. For example, if the harem-master in a group of Bluehead Wrasse ( and many others ) dies, the biggest female changes sex and takes over. Anemonefish do the reverse. Or the slipper limpet Crepidula fornicata where whether you're male depends where you are in the pile. The one at the bottom is female. The males on top of her turn female as more males pile on top. Being both at once is even more common - e.g. the hyper-endowed hermaphrodite Acorn Barnacle, who sits glued to hir rock and waves a penis several times as long as hir body. That's like sitting at home & impregnating all your neighbours without stirring from the couch. And then they'll do the same to you.
But the Medal for Multiplying Personal Pronouns Beyond All Sane Limits goes to Schizophyllum commune, a timber or occasionally human-brain-eating fungus that has 28,000 possible sexes.
#6 - Marital Aids
Quite apart from the monkeys that will pay to watch video of high-ranking monkeys doing it ( the Origin of Celebrity Porn?) or the chimp that got off to Playgirl centrefolds, or the way orang-utans make their own sex-toys... those species that come with their own elaborate equipment and behaviors to best impress a mate ( most frequently in species with promiscuous females, interestingly enough. The female orgasm seems to evolve most readily in promiscuous lineages, too ).
The red-billed buffalo weaver, for example, a bird who has evolved a pseudophallus to entertain his ladyfriend.
But for further proving that there's nothing humanity ever invented that evolution didn't get to first, the blue ribbon in this category has to go to the moth, Olceclostera seraphica who has a built-in vibrator as part of his genitals.
#5 - Watersports, bloodplay, BDSM, etc etc etc
There is another reason a species could have overly elaborate genitalia - the vicious version of the arms race between females who want to mate with multiple males, and males trying to ensure they're the only parent. The depths of that ugly scene are plumbed by the seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, who comes equipped with such a ghastly array of anchoring spikes that a virgin seed beetle will live weeks longer then one unfortunate enough to have bred.
But since this is a post about dicking not dickery, I'll return our attention to behaviours that seem extreme or fetishistic to human sensibilities, but that both participants seem to enjoy anyway (Indeed, I can't think of any human kink evolution didn't arrive at first).
There's plenty to choose from - the crab spider Xysticus cristatus who ties his lover down with silk before mating; the horrifyingly gory loveplay of Crabeater Seals (second-most common large mammal, after humans); the spider that uses human blood as an aphrodisiac ; the love harpoons of the common garden snail - but for straightforward perversity I'll award this category to that species of antelope, who to test whether a potential mate is fertile and willing to mate, will first drink her urine. And then kick her in the crotch.
( And do you think I can rediscover which species of antelope that is? Can I hell. I leave you to imagine the kind of results I'm getting on Google )
#4 - Eternal virgins
Or if you've been horrified by all this - and who can blame you - you might want to join the long list of organisms that reproduce asexually. The coachwhip lizards above can do so, of course. So can some sharks, komodo dragons, and turkeys. But even those species that are born already pregnant with the next generation of clones will switch back to sexual reproduction, occasionally, or go extinct as the environment changes or diseases evolve to catch up.
With the exception of the bdelloid rotifers, who as far as we can tell have been happily cloning themselves for the last 85-million years.
#3 - Pansexuality
If, one the other hand, you prefer variety, you can always go to the other extreme, and hump everything in sight. And thus in 3rd place we have dolphins - mostly Tursiops truncatus and Tursiops aduncus, although there's a reason the Pink River Dolphin gets blamed for any unexplained pregnancies in the area. The Bottlenose Dolphin, a genus of such prodigious sexual versatility they're rivalled only by humans, bonobos, and Captain Jack Harkness. Teams of Indian Ocean Bottlenose bulls are known to ally with other teams ( a level of social structure previously unknown outside humans ) to kidnap and monopolise a cow. They'll happily romp with other species of dolphin, and don't stop there. Sharks, eels, sea-turtles, humans, hats - nothing is safe. Sad to say, they can be quite violent if turned down. It probably doesn't help that they use their prehensile genitalia to explore the texture of things they find interesting.
#2 - Twincestous Prenatal Harems In Your Mother's Corpse
Pretty much unbeatable for levels of WTF. The mealworm mite Acarophenax mahunkai, who shares his mother's womb with some 50 nubile sisters and maybe a brother. Eventually, after an orgy of incestuous prenatal sex, Mom bursts, leaving her pregnant daughters to wander off and her son to write letters to his therapist.
And this sort of thing is common in species that can eliminate recessive genes from the pool.
But for the top slot, for a behavior so vanishingly rare it can only be described as deviant...
#1 - Monogamy
True monogamy is incredibly uncommon in nature. The vast majority of species we thought were paragons of virtue are, it turns out, only sexually monogamous as long as the mate is watching. Even in humans the rate of reproductive bastardry runs between 1.3 and 3.5 percent, not taking into account that humans have been using contraceptives since before records began.
Nonetheless - I do know one species so devoted that they're never spend a day apart, that after meeting spend the rest of their lives in a totally faithful embrace, and indeed will die if they never meet their One True Love...
It's the parasitic flatworm Diplozoon paradoxum, a fingernail-sized parasite of Eurasian cyprinid fish. Pics here.
After the juvenile Diplozoon meet for the first time in the gills of a goldfish, or whatnot, they'll attach suckers to each other and fuse completely, growing and crosslinking their gonads, until it's impossible to tell there were two animals to begin with. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only species on the planet known to be 100% monogamous.
The Top Ten List of Alternative Sexualities
Now this is a post that really deserves the Mature Content LJ tags. And I'm including sexual behaviour, adaptations, reproductive genetics, and everything else under the wide heading of Sex. I probably won't cover much merely heterosexual happywriggles that use anatomy you aren't used to ( i.e. Velvet Worms and their face full of hypodermic penises and corrosive sperm; or the way giant octopuses stuff a meter-long cigar full of sperm up the female's nose, where it explodes. I'll probably save those for another Top Ten List - Detachable Penis and 9 Other Ways To Make Your Love-Life Seem Boring)
And I owe a debt here to Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation - the definitive guide to the evolutionary biology of sex by Olivia Judson. Highly recommended, very informative, and very funny. There was a documentary series too. It was a musical.
Anyway...
#10 - Sex Addicts
The drive to reproduce is so fundamental that most species will go to pretty ridiculous lengths to achieve it ( and it's difficult to deny that an amorous tortoise is ridiculous. They're such notorious sex maniacs there's a joke about it in a Terry Pratchett novel ). One way evolution has done this is by making sex as enjoyable as possible, despite all the dangers. In quite a few species the males will throw all other concerns to the wind in his single-minded pursuit of Nookie.
One such sexual athlete is the Antechinus, a genus of small marsupial carnivore that spends the last two weeks of its life in a non-stop sexual frenzy, racing from female to female in its desperate attempt to impregnate as many of them as possible in marathon 12-hour sessions, before dropping dead of exhaustion. Quite possibly the Australian Bush rings with doppler-shifted screams of "SEEEEEEEEXXXXXXX!!!!!!!" zooming this way and that in the undergrowth.
Click to view#9 - Necrophilia
I'm not ranking this one higher because it's hardly a productive strategy. In a lot of cases, it's the result of the male being too lust-crazed to care that the object of his affections is still alive, let alone the right species or gender ( as was the case with the now famous mallard that won Kees Moeliker an Ig Nobel Prize, or the unfortunate goldfish that get strangled to death by amorous frogs and horny toads ).
However - bacteria have sex too, exchanging genes with their neighbours via narrow tubes. But they'll also incorporate genes from viruses, and scavenge genes from any dead bacteria they stumble across. Thus neatly combining promiscuity, bestiality, and necrophilia into one handy package.
#8 - Homosexuality
Another behaviour that at first glance seems pretty counter-productive. But it's also very widespread. Muff-diving hedgehogs, lesbian seagulls, gay manatees... It's all almost old hat, these days.
Still, it seems to work out OK for some species. The Whiptail lizard Cnemidophorus neomexicanus seems to doing fine as dedicated lesbians. Indeed, they don't have much choice since there aren't any males in the species, but their lesbian couplings still ensure larger eggs in whoever is playing the female role ( Hot Lizard-girl on Lizard-girl Action!)
And then there's Australia's own Black Swan, just one more discovery on top of trees that drop branches not leaves, fruit with the seed outside, giant bouncing two-headed rats the size of sheep, and beavers with beaks, that had Europe saying "Find some strong drugs too, did you?"
Gay Black Swan couples are highly successful parents. And they do that by using a surrogate mother or by forcibly adopting every cygnet on the lake, chasing off the real parents, and monopolising the entire area. They're large and aggressive enough to be very good foster parents, too. So their genetic contribution ( at least in the later case ) is zero, but without them only a fraction of that year's cygnets would survive.
#7 - Transexuality, Hermaphroditism, & More Than 4 Genders
And why stick with one kind of genitalia anyway? Changing sexes is well-known, especially in fish. For example, if the harem-master in a group of Bluehead Wrasse ( and many others ) dies, the biggest female changes sex and takes over. Anemonefish do the reverse. Or the slipper limpet Crepidula fornicata where whether you're male depends where you are in the pile. The one at the bottom is female. The males on top of her turn female as more males pile on top. Being both at once is even more common - e.g. the hyper-endowed hermaphrodite Acorn Barnacle, who sits glued to hir rock and waves a penis several times as long as hir body. That's like sitting at home & impregnating all your neighbours without stirring from the couch. And then they'll do the same to you.
But the Medal for Multiplying Personal Pronouns Beyond All Sane Limits goes to Schizophyllum commune, a timber or occasionally human-brain-eating fungus that has 28,000 possible sexes.
#6 - Marital Aids
Quite apart from the monkeys that will pay to watch video of high-ranking monkeys doing it ( the Origin of Celebrity Porn?) or the chimp that got off to Playgirl centrefolds, or the way orang-utans make their own sex-toys... those species that come with their own elaborate equipment and behaviors to best impress a mate ( most frequently in species with promiscuous females, interestingly enough. The female orgasm seems to evolve most readily in promiscuous lineages, too ).
The red-billed buffalo weaver, for example, a bird who has evolved a pseudophallus to entertain his ladyfriend.
But for further proving that there's nothing humanity ever invented that evolution didn't get to first, the blue ribbon in this category has to go to the moth, Olceclostera seraphica who has a built-in vibrator as part of his genitals.
#5 - Watersports, bloodplay, BDSM, etc etc etc
There is another reason a species could have overly elaborate genitalia - the vicious version of the arms race between females who want to mate with multiple males, and males trying to ensure they're the only parent. The depths of that ugly scene are plumbed by the seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, who comes equipped with such a ghastly array of anchoring spikes that a virgin seed beetle will live weeks longer then one unfortunate enough to have bred.
But since this is a post about dicking not dickery, I'll return our attention to behaviours that seem extreme or fetishistic to human sensibilities, but that both participants seem to enjoy anyway (Indeed, I can't think of any human kink evolution didn't arrive at first).
There's plenty to choose from - the crab spider Xysticus cristatus who ties his lover down with silk before mating; the horrifyingly gory loveplay of Crabeater Seals (second-most common large mammal, after humans); the spider that uses human blood as an aphrodisiac ; the love harpoons of the common garden snail - but for straightforward perversity I'll award this category to that species of antelope, who to test whether a potential mate is fertile and willing to mate, will first drink her urine. And then kick her in the crotch.
( And do you think I can rediscover which species of antelope that is? Can I hell. I leave you to imagine the kind of results I'm getting on Google )
#4 - Eternal virgins
Or if you've been horrified by all this - and who can blame you - you might want to join the long list of organisms that reproduce asexually. The coachwhip lizards above can do so, of course. So can some sharks, komodo dragons, and turkeys. But even those species that are born already pregnant with the next generation of clones will switch back to sexual reproduction, occasionally, or go extinct as the environment changes or diseases evolve to catch up.
With the exception of the bdelloid rotifers, who as far as we can tell have been happily cloning themselves for the last 85-million years.
#3 - Pansexuality
If, one the other hand, you prefer variety, you can always go to the other extreme, and hump everything in sight. And thus in 3rd place we have dolphins - mostly Tursiops truncatus and Tursiops aduncus, although there's a reason the Pink River Dolphin gets blamed for any unexplained pregnancies in the area. The Bottlenose Dolphin, a genus of such prodigious sexual versatility they're rivalled only by humans, bonobos, and Captain Jack Harkness. Teams of Indian Ocean Bottlenose bulls are known to ally with other teams ( a level of social structure previously unknown outside humans ) to kidnap and monopolise a cow. They'll happily romp with other species of dolphin, and don't stop there. Sharks, eels, sea-turtles, humans, hats - nothing is safe. Sad to say, they can be quite violent if turned down. It probably doesn't help that they use their prehensile genitalia to explore the texture of things they find interesting.
#2 - Twincestous Prenatal Harems In Your Mother's Corpse
Pretty much unbeatable for levels of WTF. The mealworm mite Acarophenax mahunkai, who shares his mother's womb with some 50 nubile sisters and maybe a brother. Eventually, after an orgy of incestuous prenatal sex, Mom bursts, leaving her pregnant daughters to wander off and her son to write letters to his therapist.
And this sort of thing is common in species that can eliminate recessive genes from the pool.
But for the top slot, for a behavior so vanishingly rare it can only be described as deviant...
#1 - Monogamy
True monogamy is incredibly uncommon in nature. The vast majority of species we thought were paragons of virtue are, it turns out, only sexually monogamous as long as the mate is watching. Even in humans the rate of reproductive bastardry runs between 1.3 and 3.5 percent, not taking into account that humans have been using contraceptives since before records began.
Nonetheless - I do know one species so devoted that they're never spend a day apart, that after meeting spend the rest of their lives in a totally faithful embrace, and indeed will die if they never meet their One True Love...
It's the parasitic flatworm Diplozoon paradoxum, a fingernail-sized parasite of Eurasian cyprinid fish. Pics here.
After the juvenile Diplozoon meet for the first time in the gills of a goldfish, or whatnot, they'll attach suckers to each other and fuse completely, growing and crosslinking their gonads, until it's impossible to tell there were two animals to begin with. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only species on the planet known to be 100% monogamous.