Warning: video contains graphic images of animals humping
Although we’re only 10 days into 2017 it must truly be the end of times, because monkeys are porking deer now like it’s the most normal thing in the entire world. In a new paper called “Interspecies Sexual Behavior Between a Male Japanese Macaque and Female Sika Deer,” scientists believe they have documented the very first instance of two completely different species of animals engaging in so-called consensual sex, or “reproductive interference,” as its technically referred to.
Sex between different species of animals isn’t unheard of, although it usually occurs among animals that are genetically similar, and often in captivity — which makes this so unusual. Reading further into it however, it seems as if to call it “consensual sex” is a bit of a stretch, since it’s only barely consensual and not exactly sexual intercourse, in the biblical sense of the word.
Japanese macaques have in the past been known to ride along on deer. But the researchers say that the monkey in the new study “showed clear sexual behaviour towards several female deer”. Some of those deer tried to escape – but others apparently consented to the behaviour and “accepted the mount”, the researchers write in the journal Primates.
The researchers wrote that one deer “seemed to accept to be ridden by the male macaque”, and that it was apparently licking sperm that had been deposited on its back by the monkey. Another deer refused the mount and threw the macaque off its back.
As far as explanations for the strange behavior, scientists are throwing around a few different theories, such as the male macaques having a dearth of females to mate with, that this is just a way for juvenile monkeys to learn to copulate, or the fact that the macaques are entering breeding season and the deer just happen to be there — the jungle equivalent of “last call,” if you will. You know what they say in the animal kingdom, better to leave with a deer than go home alone.
(Via The Independent)