Common bottlenose dolphins have sex frequently. Copulation only lasts a few seconds, but social sex, which involves heterosexual and homosexual pairs of dolphins and their body parts, can last much longer and can happen more frequently. New research suggests that swimming is pleasurable for both sexes.
Female bottlenose dolphins most likely experience pleasure through their clitorises according to a paper published on Monday.
Scientists who research dolphins were not surprised by the findings. Sarah Mesnick, who was not involved with the research, said that she was surprised by how long it had taken to look at the reproductive anatomy. She said it took a team of brilliant women.
A researcher at the University of Minnesota who was not involved with the paper wrote in an email that a lot of people assume humans are unique in having sex for pleasure. This research challenges that idea.
The more we know about the social behavior of marine mammals, the better we can manage and conserve them.
Historically, researchers have focused on male genitalia because of prejudice against male subjects, prejudice against female choice in sexual selection and the fact that it can be easier to study something that sticks out. Female genitalia were thought to be boring. The more researchers study female genitalia, the more they realize that this isn't the case. The shift may be driven by the increasing number of women researchers.
The author of the paper, a evolutionary biologist at Mount Holyoke College, studied the dolphin clitoris by way of the dolphin vagina. She and another author on the paper previously revealed how female dolphins have vaginas that can be very large. The female agency can choose which male's sperm willfertilize her egg.
Dr. Brennan and Dr. Orbach were able to get their hands on many of the dolphin vaginas that they had been researching. The researchers received frozen tissue from stranded cetaceans in different states of decay over the years.
Warming flesh began to smell as the researchers thawed it. Dr. Brennan said that he would never be able to eat meat again if he were a vegetarian.
Like cultured oysters, every dolphin vagina unfurled to reveal a kind of treasure: an unmistakable clitoris, the size of an AA battery and the color of spam. There is a giant clitoris right there, Dr. Brennan said.
The researchers used a microCT scanner to take tissue samples from the dolphins' clitorises. There are a number of signs of a functional clitoris, including the possibility of turgid tissue with blood. They found a band of tissue surrounding the clitoris that keeps it in shape. The shape of the clitoris changed as dolphins got older, suggesting it has a function.
The clitoral tissue contained large nerves and free nerve endings that were abundant under the skin. The clitoral skin was a third of the thickness of the neighboring genital skin, making it easier to stimulate.
Brian Langerhans, an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina State University who was not involved with the research, said that the observations provide some nice suggestive evidence that female dolphins feel pleasure. He said more research was needed to prove the hypothesis.
It is difficult to study dolphin sex in a lab or in the wild. The signs of pleasure associated with humans and other primate may look different in a dolphin. Their faces and bodies are different from ours. How would we know?
The need for comparative research between other species of cetaceans was suggested by Dr. Mesnick. Are they going to find the same kind of body parts in species that are more solitary or open-ocean? Dr. Mesnick wondered. In a species where males and females interact less often, a pleasurable clitoris might be less useful.
Dr. Brennan has an orca clitoris in her lab and she wants to study clitorises from across the animal kingdom. The blue whale may be the white whale. Dr. Brennan said that they had the biggest everything. I bet you a million dollars that they have a clitoris.
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