The first rigorous study of clitoral anatomy in humans wasn’t published until 1998.ĭuring Brennan’s recent research on dolphin vaginal anatomy, the large size of the common bottlenose dolphin clitoris aroused her curiosity ( SN: 12/15/17). Like female reproductive anatomy generally, the clitoris - in many species, not just dolphins - is poorly studied in contrast to male genitalia. Females also masturbate by rubbing their clitoris against objects on the sea bottom. “What that looks like is females stimulating each other’s clitoris,” with snouts, flippers or flukes, Brennan says. Heterosexual and homosexual sex is common in wild dolphins, including female-female sex. The findings suggest that the bottlenose dolphin clitoris likely provides pleasure during sex, which adds up since dolphins have sex all the time, says Patricia Brennan, an evolutionary biologist at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. Abundant sensory nerves and spongy tissues in the genitalia of our female flippered friends suggest the dolphin clitoris may be highly sensitive to physical contact, researchers report January 10 in Current Biology. One reason may be that the prominent female dolphin clitoris provides sexual pleasure.Ī new up-close look at clitoral tissue from common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus) reveals many similarities to the human clitoris. “But looking at the reproductive anatomy, we’re learning that they have all sorts of cryptic ways to control paternity.Dolphins have active sex lives, with frequent dalliances not just for reproduction. “It might appear behaviorally that females are very passive,” Orbach told New Scientist. This allows the female to obstruct a penis from penetrating her, which seemingly gives her some choice in the mating process. In the common porpoise and bottlenose dolphin, they found that the females had an extra fold on the outside of their vagina. They took CT scans of the penises inserted into the vaginas to figure out how they fit. Then they inflated the penises with saline to simulate an erection and compared them with silicone molds of the dolphin vaginas. Three-dimensional model fit of male (red) inside female (blue) genitalia. They detached the genitals from common and bottlenose dolphins, common porpoises and common seals, removing the vaginal opening, clitoris, cervix and ovaries from the females and the “penis tip and the entire shaft through to the pelvic bone,” from the males, according to Orbach. So Orbach and her co-authors collected dead dolphins - all of which had died of natural causes - to figure out how dolphins mate. Researchers also know that dolphin and cetacean penises come in a ton of different shapes and sizes, but knew little about cetacean vaginas. These packs then surround a female and take their turns – giving the female little to no choice on who gets her pregnant. What researchers do know is that when male bottlenose dolphins are looking to mate, they form packs of two to four dolphins in order to fight off any competitors. “I’ve done several of them, so I can tell you.” “There are very few studies of the mating behavior of cetaceans because of these challenges,” Dara Orbach, an author of the study, told Motherboard. Patricia Brennan, one of the study’s co-authors, makes a silicone mold of the dolphin’s genitals. They live far from shore, in the middle of the ocean and are always on the move, making it hard for researchers to observe them for very long, let alone catch them having sex. Scientists have long had trouble figuring out how dolphins - or cetaceans in general - get it on. Their findings were published in Proceedings of the Royal Society. Researchers looked at an array of dolphin species to figure out how they have sex and found that bottlenose dolphins and common porpoises have genitalia that’s evolved to act as a barrier to unwanted fertilization. Some female dolphins have vaginas that bat away unwelcome penises, according to a new study.
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