Bottlenose dolphins are “hypersexual creatures”
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Patricia Brennan has forged a controversial career in studying the bend and turns of the development of animal genitalia. A biologist based at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, her latest research suggests that bottlenose dolphin dolphins have clitorises that have evolved for pleasure – something she says makes sense given the measure of sex the animals have. Brennan tells New Scientist about her latest discovery and why it ’ s so significant to study female genitalia .
Jessica Hamzelou: Why study dolphin clitorises?
Patricia Brennan : I have been collaborating with a research worker who was studying vagina in dolphins. Dolphins have identical complicated vagina, which contain many folds. The hypothesis was that these folds were there to exclude salt urine during sexual intercourse, because it is supposed to be deadly to mammalian sperm. But cipher had actually ever truly studied these folds or tried to test the idea.
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We haven ’ thymine been able to pinpoint precisely why they are that room. But when we dissected the vagina, I would look at these clitorises and be merely amazed. I was like : “ Oh my gosh, these are pretty big, well-developed clitorises. ” And I thought that might be something interesting to look at .
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We know that dolphins have sex all the meter. They have arouse for social reasons, not just for replica. It makes common sense that the clitoris would be functional [ and give joy when stimulated ] .
Are dolphins really having sex all the time? Are they more sexually active than other animals? We don ’ metric ton very know if they are having more sexual activity than other marine mammals. It ’ s very heavily to study intimate behavior in cetaceans because they ’ re out there [ in the ocean ]. But bottle-nosed whale dolphins live close up to the shore, where scientists can go out on their boats and study them. They see them having sex year-round, even when the females are not receptive, therefore not ready to get pregnant and hold babies .
And not alone do they have sex all the time, they have a lot of homosexual arouse ampere well. The females will rub each other ’ randomness clitorises with their snouts and their flippers actually frequently. It ’ s not like every once in a blue moonlight you ’ ll see females stimulating each other, it ’ second actually pretty common. Females besides masturbate .
If they ’ re out there seeking all these intimate experiences, it ’ s probably that it ’ sulfur probably feeling estimable .
Do you see these behaviours in males too?
The males, for certain, have lots of homosexual sexual activity. The males will have anal sex, they ’ ll insert their penises into each other ’ s blowholes. Bottlenose dolphins are actually hypersexual animals .
How did you go about studying dolphin clitorises?
They came from dolphins that have died from natural causes, by and large from strandings [ when a nautical mammal is found on shore ]. It has taken years to get a sample size that is good enough for a study because it ’ south rare that an animal becomes stranded and that a scientist finds it before it has decayed excessively much .
We get a freeze package that has been sent overnight in the mail. They come from all over the US. When they arrive in our lab, we begin thawing the tissues, doing a bunch of measurements and performing the dissections .
And for the clitoris in especial, we cut around the entire clitoris structure ampere a lot as we can, and then do a couple of different things. We stain some of the tissue so that we can examine it in a micro CT scanner to see the indulgent tissue. other samples are dissected, and some undergo histology [ detailed analysis under a microscope ] .
What are you looking for specifically?
We were particularly concerned in looking at the erectile tissue. Does it have spaces within it that could fill up with blood ? And does it have a blood add that indicates blood would rush into these spaces on foreplay and engorge them ? This is what happens in humans .
We besides look for the tunic albuginea, a thickly band of collagen and elastin that surrounds the erectile tissue. The presence of this tissue suggests that it allows the erectile tissue to distend, but prevents it from bulging out .
We look at the nerves, besides. We were able to see that they have very large nerves. Some of these nerves are up to half a millimeter in diameter, which is pretty big. There aren ’ t many measurements that we could compare them to, we were precisely shocked by how big they were.
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From there, we were besides able to see these absolve nerve endings that are right underneath the skin. These are known to increase sensitivity. We have these in bang-up abundance in our fingertips, and of class in the clitoris and in the human glans penis .
And then we found that the bark itself in the clitoris is about the third of the thickness of the adjacent skin in the genitals. Once we put all of those things in concert, we were reasonably certain that this is functioning in pleasure, precisely like in humans .
Does this tell us anything new about dolphins or how they form social bonds?
No. I think it makes perfect feel. Dolphins have a bunch of sex, females have a set of sex with each other. Their clitoris is identical well developed and it looks like it provides pleasure. It equitable makes feel. It ’ s basically providing the geomorphologic evidence that we need to close that shell and say, yes, this is what a functional clitoris looks like .
Is this controversial?
There is this guess out there that, because penises and clitorises share the same developmental nerve pathway, the clitoris is barely a miniskirt penis. It ’ s not truly designed for anything and it doesn ’ t necessarily have a affair. It ’ south fair there because males have a penis .
There is debate whether tied human female orgasms are functional or precisely a by-product. It ’ south one of those things that just refuses to die .
Read more: Female orgasm debates reveal the sexism in sex medicine
obviously, as a female scientist who studies arouse and sexual reproduction, I have a trouble with that idea that there would be no function for a structure because it ’ s developmentally homologous with the penis .
We can show that this is more than a miniskirt penis ; this is actually a fully functional organ that ’ randomness serving some kind of function. It ’ randomness probably evolutionarily a good theme because it makes you seek out arouse more much .
Where does the research go from here?
now we have this set of criteria, we can start looking at other species that normally you wouldn ’ thyroxine keep in a lab and start asking the same questions. We know bonobos have arouse all the time, and we know that their clitoris looks very much like a homo clitoris. It ’ sulfur much easier for people to imagine that, of run, if a pygmy chimpanzee is grimacing and vocalising when it ’ s having sex, it looks like they ’ re having a enjoyable answer, kind of like ours .
Dolphins are very different animals from primates. now, we ’ ra starting to look at the alpaca clitoris and look for the same kinds of geomorphologic features. We ’ ve got a whole bunch together of vertebrates. In my lab, we work with sharks, snakes, alpaca, dolphins, ducks – equitable a divers group of species. And we always find something concern .
What about male genitalia?
We besides have collected plenty of penises and we are matter to in looking at their morphology and how they function .
In general, I study genital coevolution. I ’ thousand interested in looking at males and females and how they co-evolved together. When it comes to genitalia, you have to look at both sides of the equality to figure out how they work, because mechanically they have to fit together .
The job of genitalia is to facilitate male and female gametes getting together, and you could have a tube going into a cylinder that would achieve that basic goal. But genitalia are not like that. They have all sorts of wyrd elaborations and early features that are going on. They have spines, bumps, turns, pockets and spirals. We ’ re trying to understand the evolutionary processes that are influencing their morphology and their function .
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We do study both, but what I keep finding is that because people have tended to study the male more than the female, there is a bunch about the female that we don ’ t know. We ’ ra kind of catching up with all the female stuff .
Critics have questioned the importance of your research in the past. What is your response to people who say this kind of work is irrelevant?
It is basic skill. It ’ s not designed to solve a particular trouble. When people ask why we study it, they [ want to know if ] it is going to make any money or heal some disease. The answer is : possibly, we don ’ t know. We ’ re trying to describe natural phenomena and understand how they work .
Your question touches on something else. There are people who are uncomfortable with studies of intimate behavior in general, whether in humans or other animals. That doesn ’ metric ton mean that sex is unimportant or that we shouldn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate be studying it .
I could be looking at stomach morphology, and that probably wouldn ’ thymine annoyance people. separate of the reason people are bothered is because it ’ s sex and intimate replica. That ’ second apprehensible, but I ’ m a scientist. I ask questions where I think there are interesting questions to be asked .
This consultation has been edited for length and clearness.
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Journal reference book : Current Biology, DOI : 10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.020
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