"Blow Job" Bats

For how thoroughly enjoyable the experience is, oral sex is actually surprising rare in the animal kingdom. Apart from humans (who obviously do our fair share), our close relatives the primates are the only other members of the animal kingdom known to partake… until recently.

Researchers recently observed oral sex for the first time in a non-primate species. During sex, the female short-nosed fruit bat has been observed licking the genitals of their partner.

(Photo Credits: AAAS)

Libiao Zhang and his colleagues from the Guangdong Entomological Institute in China, have been studying the mating behavior of the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx). In the lab, they paired males and females in cages that mimicked their natural environment and infrared cameras beamed video of the bats’ exploits back to Zhang and his team at the lab.

For the most part, the animals reacted exactly as they had expected them to. The males of the species built tents made out of Chinese fan-palm leaves in order to attract the females. Both males and females groomed each other during their courtship. Then came the skinemax aspect, after the male bat mounted the female from behind, she bent over and began licking his penis.

According to the original report on PlosONE, of the 20 observed mating bat pairs, 14 of the females performed fellatio on the males they were with. The male bats never “withdrew” from the females while being licked. Authors of the study found that the longer a female performed fellatio on the male, the longer copulation lasted. According to the AAAS article, “for each second of licking, the female bats gained 6 seconds of copulations).

Zhang and his team speculate that the oral sex may prolong intercourse by increasing lubrication and helping maintain the males’ erection. The fellating females mated for an average of 4 minutes, nearly twice as long as their non-fellating counterparts.

Frans de Waal, a primatologiost at Emory University who has worked extensively with bonobos (the primate to partake in fellatio most frequently) announces that “the finding of fellatio in bats is exciting news.” He believes that the reason oral sex is rarely mentioned is due to the societal shyness about the issue.

(After what happened to Professor Dr. Dylan Evans at the University College, Cork, Ireland, when he showed his co-worker this study, I’m inclined to think that Mr. de Waal may be right.)

(Photo Credit: Huffington Post)

Regardless of societal objections, Paul Vasey, a behavioral scientist from the University of Lethbridge thinks that this discovery provides a unique opportunity to test some theories about the evolutionary role of oral sex.

Although it’s possible that bats are just being sexually playful like their human and bonobo counterparts, the discovery still suggests that there may be a biological advantage to fellatio (this line PROBABLY won’t work on your girlfriend the next time she’s not in the mood… but hey, it’s worth a try).

FOOTNOTE: Below is a particularly amusing/disturbing section from the original report about the…(um)… dynamics between males and females during bat-sex. (Not the delicious, Bruce Wayne kind).

“Sometimes the female appeared to resist, or even escaped by accident, and then the male would follow her until copulation was completed. In two instances, the female evaded the male for about eight to 25 seconds and turned to bite the male, but later the male followed her until mating was completed. In four instances, the female appeared to resist the male's approaches, but did not evade successfully, and copulations were eventually completed.”

I find myself laughing at the thought of the next Law & Order spin-off… Bats: SVU.