RedGage

A long while back, I got the inspiration of writing about animal homosexuality and masturbation after reading about a display at the Oslo Natural History Museum about a year ago. It is well documented now that many species of animals do indulge in homosexual behavior as well as masturbation. But this news article was interesting indeed. I had heard of a few instances of oral sex being performed in some species of primates, especially amongst the apes, and related that to an evolutionary link between man and monkey, or in the genetic similarities that we share. Autofellatio or the act of performing oral sex on oneself has also been seen in a few other animals as well – goats, hyenas, apes, bats and sheep. But so far I had never heard of fellatio (females performing oral sex on males) being performed in bats.

A group of scientists in China are quite stumped as to why fruit bats would perform fellatio. Considering they could not find any evolutionary theory to explain it, they concluded that it was beneficial to the female as it resulted in longer copulations, ensuring fertilization perhaps. They watched a number of females bend and lick the penis of the male. The news article comes with a short video produced by the scientists of a pair of bats copulating and the female performing fellatio, which can be watched here as well.