Salt * Wet * Fish

I found this article in the Ecologist (www.theecologist.org). Hopefully, this offers some cure for those sexual hang-up queens.

Dear Tatiana

I’m a marine iguana and I’m appalled by the behaviour of the young iguanas of today: I keep encountering groups of youths masturbating at me. It’s revolting. I’m sure they didn’t dare act this way in Darwin’s time. How can I make them stop?
Disgusted in the Galapagos

Dear ‘Disgusted in the Galapagos’

I get a lot of letters from young male marine iguanas, frustrated because the girls ignore them. But this is the first time I’ve heard complaints from the other side. Look at it from the guy’s point of view. Here, he is, a tasteful shade of red, his spiky crest a full 20 centimetres from his crown to his tail; he’s ready to go, desperate to use one or the other of his penises (yes, like many reptiles, he has two, a left and a right penis). But being young and, therefore, small he doesn’t have much of a chance. It isn’t just that you ladies prefer to mate with older, bigger males; it’s that even if he manages to mount a female, the odds are he’ll be shoved aside by a bigger fellow before he climaxes. “That’s why young males masturbate when they see a girl go by. Wanking reduces the time they need to ejaculate during sex, and thus reduces the risk of being interrupted before they climax. So I’m afraid the behaviour may be here to stay. Young wankers probably sire more children than those who abstain.

Do any other animals masturbate? Yes. In many primates, individuals of both sexes masturbate a lot. Take the sooty mangabey, a smoke-coloured monkey from West Africa with a long tail and extravagant tufts of whiskers on its cheeks. Some females use their hands to stimulate themselves during sex.

Male and female orang-utans stimulate themselves with sex toys they make out of leaves or twigs. One female chimpanzee that was raised in a human household masturbated to a copy of Playgirl thrilling to the photos of naked human males - especially the centrefold. Other mammals masturbate, too. Male red deer do it by rubbing the tips of their antlers through the grass. The whole act takes 15 seconds from start to spurt, and during the breeding season some stags masturbate several times a day. But does any other animal do it, like marine iguanas, out of fear of being interrupted in bed? Frankly, the matter hasn’t been the subject of much research. There has been more work on a related topic: big balls.

Big balls are a more conventional way for small males to increase their odds of fertilising eggs. The logic is simple. In species in which small males have to sneak to mate, they are guaranteed to be at risk of sperm competition. Sperm competition is like a raffle: more tickets mean more chances. Therefore, small males that invest a larger proportion of their bodies in making sperm can buy more raffle tickets - and improve their chances of success when they mate. Large males, as long as they are reasonably effective at guarding females, don’t need so many tickets or such big tackle.

That’s why there’s often no relation between the size of a man and that of his privates: bigger men do not necessarily have bigger bits. Indeed (more’s the pity), it’s often the opposite. The plainfin midshipman, otherwise known as the California singing fish, takes this to extremes. Males have either big brains or big balls. The brainy kind excavate cave-like nests beneath rocks in the inter-tidal zone. Once a male has prepared a nest, he hums to attract females. A single humming bout can last for a quarter of an hour. Thus, he has large muscles for humming and extra neurones to control these muscles. When a female arrives, she slowly lays her eggs on the ceiling of the nest; as she does this, the male quivers beside her every few minutes, a sign he is releasing sperm. When the female is done which can take as long as 20 hours, the male throws her out of the nest so that he can guard the fertilised eggs and sing to attract more females. The other type of male - the one with the big balls - sneaks into the nest at the crucial moment. These fellows can’t hum: they lack the mental and physical apparatus. The best they can do is grunt. But boy, are they well-hung! A sneak has gonads nine times heavier than a brainy male does: his gonads are so large that his stomach bulges as if he’s pregnant. No wonder he grunts.

So you brainy types out there shouldn’t feel too smug. Your position is only safe if sneaks are rare. If sneaks are common, then you’re at greater risk of sperm competition and should invest more in making sperm. Thus, you should have larger balls. Compare two species of dung beetle: Onthophagus binodis and Onthophagus taurus. These are among it score of dung beetle species introduced to Australia from other parts of the world.

You see, Australia has no native cows, and the cows imported by humans produced more dung than the native dung beetles knew what to do with. As a result, large quantities of cow manure accumulated in pastures. To solve this problem, dung beetles with a talent for disposing of cow dung were invited to immigrate. Which is to say, dung beetles were captured in other parts of the world, quarantined (I love the thought of an insect quarantine) and then released in Australia.

To return to the matter at hand, Onthophagus binodis and Onthophagus taurus have similar biology. Just like the plainfin midshipman, males come in two sizes: big ones with horns, and little ones without horns (in O binodis, the big males have a single horn on their backs; in O taurus, they have - as the name suggests - two curved horns on their heads). Males and females meet at fresh mounds of dung. Females pair up with big males, and the pairs dig burrows, pausing front time to time to copulate. (Copulation in dung beetles has rarely been observed, but in O binodis the male caresses the female with his first two pairs of legs, mounts her, and then goes into spasms during which he taps her back with his front legs.) A typical burrow has several passageways branching off from it central corridor. At the end of each passageway, the beetles deposit a wad of dung. The female lays a fertilised egg on the wad and then seals off the passageway with earth. Although the male will give his partner lots of help collecting dung and so on, he does not like to leave the entrance of the burrow unattended. This is a wise precaution, since smaller males rush into burrows when big males aren’t looking and copulate with females. Sometimes, the small males are even sneakier and dig their way into burrows, entering through the walls.

Sneak attacks are more likely to be a problem for O taurus than O binodis. In the latter, sneaks constitute only a third of the male population, and smaller males have both larger testes and a higher sperm count. In O taurus, by contrast, almost two thirds of males are sneaks, and big males and little males are indistinguishable on the basis of balls alone.

A parting word to all you guys who worry about being small or looking unimpressive (and girls, too, take note). In many, many species, males fall into distinct types. physical characteristics are coupled with personality traits, which means that you can tell how a fellow will behave just by looking at him. The number of types and their particular attributes vary from species to species.

Two types, however, are especially common: the Hunk and the Runt.

The Hunk suffers from a God complex: he has a high opinion of himself, he’s always keen to fight, and he spends lots of time strutting and preening. He often has many girlfriends, but he would be horrified at the thought that one of them might cheat on him. And although he’s handsome, he has, alas, small private parts.

The Runt is self-effacing in groups of other males. He dislikes fighting, but he’s pushy with the girls. He is not to be trusted: he never commits to one woman, and he’s not ashamed to cheat on his best friend. But here’s the thing: physically puny, he often has big parts. Runts make love, not war.

Extracted from Dr Tertian’s Sex Advice to all Creation by Olive Hudson, published by Vintage, price f7.99