Showing posts with label queer ethology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer ethology. Show all posts

23 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 3: When You Feel A Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin

 Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae)


When constructing a queer ethology concerned primarily with aberrant sexual behaviour, one has to mention the Adélie penguin. For not only are they among the most southerly distributed of all seabirds - found along the entire Antarctic coast - but they are also one of the most depraved

Just how pervy they are became quickly apparent to George Murray Levick, a scientist with the famous Scott Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). An experienced naturalist, Levick nevertheless found the sight of young male penguins engaging in auto-eroticism, fucking with other males, sexually coercing and abusing young chicks, and attempting to mate with the corpses of dead females, profoundly disturbing.

To be fair, when he'd signed on for the trip he was simply hoping to learn something about breeding habits; he wasn't expecting to witness acts of avian masturbation, homosexuality, gang-rape, and necrophilia and couldn't understand them except in anthro-moral terms (today, observers interpret them as responses by immature and inexperienced birds to false cues).

Struggling to describe what he saw, Levick recorded his original observations in Ancient Greek so that only gentleman scholars, such as himself, would be able to read them. Back in Blighty, however, he produced a short paper in English on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin that was privately circulated amongst a select number of experts thought likely to be interested in tales of hooligan birds causing havoc in the colony via constant acts of depravity.

This paper, based on material deemed to be so shocking that Levick was asked by his publishers to remove it from his original, more comprehensive study in order to preserve public decency, was eventually lost and forgotten about for many decades.

In fact, it wasn't until 2012 when a copy was unearthed by a researcher at the Natural History Museum that the work finally entered into the public arena; a much-needed corrective to all the idealistic penguin propaganda churned out by those who find them not only cute 'n' cuddly, but virtuous ...


Note: readers interested in this material should see Douglas G. D. Russell, William J. L. Sladen and David G. Ainley; 'Dr. George Murray Levick (1876-1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin', in Polar Record, (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Click here to read on penguinscience.com. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here

To read part two - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here
           

22 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 2: Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey)

 Photograph: Alexandre Bonnefoy/AFP/Getty Images 

"Beasts of the earth ... they gambolled in the glade" 


Our second ethological study also involves a gentle pretty thing doing something that those who like to idealise animal behaviour and use Nature as a metaphysical reference point for their own moral values, would probably prefer not to know about; in this case, a female sika deer contentedly having sex with a male Japanese macaque (or snow monkey) on the island of Yakushima.

Such full-on fucking between two such distinct species of animal is extremely rare. In fact, this is believed to be only the second scientifically recorded example of such behaviour. For despite macaques and sika deer having a close and playful symbiotic relationship in which, in return for fruit dropped from the trees and grooming services, the deer allow the monkeys to occasionally ride on their backs, they don't usually get it on.

In a paper published in the journal Primates, scientists describe how a low-ranking, but horny young male monkey was observed repeatedly engaging in acts of coition with a couple of does. Whilst one of the deer didn't seem to particulary enjoy the attention she received from the macaque and soon ran off, the other appeared to have no objections and even licked off her lover's ejaculate from her back.  

As the lead author of the above paper writes, no ambiguity is possible here; both animals physically consented to and enjoyed the shared sexual experience.

She also suggests that mate deprivation is the most likely explanation for this non-coercive interspecies romance; a theory which argues that males who don't have access to females of their own kind are more likely to display such aberrant behaviour - though why the macaque didn't simply choose to masturbate or engage in homosexual activity with other monkeys, isn't quite clear.

Ultimately, the above case is interesting not only for what it tells us about the creatures in question, but wider issues to do with interspecies relations - including human-animal relations which, in the light of this new research, can no longer be described by opponents as completely unnatural.


Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Pelé, M., Bonnefoy, A., Shimada, M. et al; 'Interspecies sexual behaviour between a male Japanese macaque and female sika deer', in Primates, Vol. 58, Issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 275-78. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here.  

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.


21 May 2017

Towards a Queer Ethology 1: Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer)

Mmm ... the sweet taste of ribs and revenge


Many of us having read Felix Salten's 1923 novel (first translated into English from German in 1928), or having seen Disney's animated adaptation (dir. David Hand, 1942), are familiar with the story of Bambi and his life in the woods; particularly his first terrifying encounter with Man the hunter, who later claims the life of his mother, much to the young fawn's distress.

The film, predictably, downplays the more violent and sombre, naturalistic elements of Salten's text, which was written for adults and intended not only as an ecologically concerned pro-animal tract, but also an anti-fascist political allegory (the book was subsequently banned by the Nazis and many early copies destroyed).

Thus, for example, the movie omits the scene wherein Bambi is shown by his father (and Great Prince of the Forest) a decaying human corpse, in order to demonstrate that Man too is mortal, despite his posssession of guns.   

I thought of this scene when reading a recently published report by forensic scientists of a white-tailed deer in Texas filmed scavenging human remains. Typically herbivores, deer have been known to occasionally enjoy birds' eggs, fish, and dead rabbits. But this is believed to be the first recorded incident of Bambi enjoying the sweet taste of Man and revenge.    

 
Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Meckel, L. A., McDaneld, C. P. and Wescott, D. J.; 'White-tailed Deer as a Taphonomic Agent: Photographic Evidence of White-tailed Deer Gnawing on Human Bone', in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, (May, 2017).

To read part two of this post - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.