Talk:Non-reproductive sexual behavior in animals

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 31 August 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Annasweetland. Peer reviewers: Journee Williams, Krsmith09.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:41, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Would this article be considered a case of WP:SYNTH?
This article's title (and the assertion that these behaviors are "non-reproductive") appears to be a case of original synthesis. It might be necessary to merge this article back into Animal sexual behavior. Jarble (talk) 20:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * What conclusion is synthesized? These behaviors are non-reproductive (with the exception of interspecies hybrids, which should be moved) and there are sources to support that label (e.g., Balcombe). KateWishing (talk) 23:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with KateWishing. If one animal, or two or more animals, engage in an activity which cannot possibly result in offspring, they are non-reproductive behaviours.  No synthesis is involved - it is a statement of fact.  How can an animal rubbing itself with a stick, or performing mating-like behaviours with a dead body, possibly be described as reproductive!  I also agree with the moving of interspecies hybrids.  I guess I saw that inter-species mating does not always result in offspring so moved the whole section.__DrChrissy (talk) 00:29, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Butterfly and beetle
A recent edit has been made regarding behaviour between a butterfly and a beetle. I am wondering why this is classified as sexual behaviour. Many animals secrete pheremones that are not necessarily sexual in nature (e.g. time-stamping of presence in domestic cats). It is also possible the investigatory behaviour was simply because the smell/taste was "different".__DrChrissy (talk) 15:52, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Possibly, but I added it here because the source seems to consider it a sexual activity. It's also listed as an example of interspecies sexual behavior in Biological Exuberance. I wouldn't care much if it was removed, though. KateWishing (talk) 16:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I just thought this example was so very much open to (mis)interpretation - and is really only supported by an anecdote, the photo is not convincing. It might be worth thinking about placing examples such as this under a heading "case-studies".__DrChrissy (talk) 18:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Refactoring styling of quotations
I noticed that this article uses really nice markeup for quotations. However, inserting the same styled blockquotes over and over again is likely to be difficult to maintain, so I've created a new barquote template that I hope both makes the job much simpler, and also makes the same styling easy to use for other articles. See this diff for the before-and-after differences. -- The Anome (talk) 10:25, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Case studies
Rafe87, there are a number of case studies that exist. I ask that you don't begin adding a lot of case studies to this article. Or study after study in general. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:35, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Youth+adult sexual behavior excerpts from Biological Exuberance
Hello. Another user has been reverting the list of other species and excerpts, all cited (albeit not with the right formatting which I'll fix). I've made this talk page post so we can discuss this. Please keep in mind that the contents of the original page are descriptive and do not imply an endorsement of nor opposition to any of the sexuality mentioned - I think this should go without saying, but stating it can't hurt.

For that user: why do you think more sources are necessary for what I've added? Each one of these can be seen as an individual claim about a specific species. There are many other claims about specific species on this page, and many of them cite the same book. Why is it improper only here? In any case, I will add some more sources, though I believe that sourcing biological exuberance for the excerpts from it is sufficient (and not grounds for reverting) and would like to hear why you disagree.

Thanks, AnarchistCitizen


 * Okay I don’t think you are understanding why I reverted your edits.CycoMa (talk) 01:43, 9 August 2021 (UTC)


 * That's why I'm posting this. The explanations you gave on the edit history page were really brief and unspecific. I made this post so that we can discuss this and so that you can explain your position. AnarchistCitizen (talk) 01:47, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * These large undigested quotations are not really suitable for Wikipedia, which is meant to be a summary of material found in reliable sources. Please also see WP:CS for how sources are cited here. Alexbrn (talk) 06:07, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay. Do you think creating a page like this would be better (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_displaying_homosexual_behavior)? I would like this information to be easily available somehow, in some place. AnarchistCitizen (talk) 17:55, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * St. Martin's Press is not exactly a science publisher, but Bagemihl appears to be a notable biologist. The book is a bit old but I think it's acceptable as a source (possibly for a mention and summary here, but also in articles on the relevant animals).  If controversial, it could be attributed to Bagemihl.  However, I agree that a huge list of cases and copying text from the book is problematic.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 23:10, 9 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I checked the source this individual uses does appear to be reliable but, it takes more than one source to have 30,000 bytes included in an article.CycoMa (talk) 00:06, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Proximate causes: Case study
The case study (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reproductive_sexual_behavior_in_animals#Case_study_2) in the Proximate Causes section seems only tangentially related to the actual topic of this article. It says that other animal nervous systems are not in any essential way different from human ones. OK, but this article is specifically about sexual behavior, not negative emotions due to separation from offspring. Consensus on removal? That experiment might be better placed in Emotion in animals, not this one (and a link to that article be here). IAmNitpicking (talk) 10:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I think the whole Proximate Causes section is irrelevant. It does not contain any information tying the content back to the topic. There is an implied relevance, but I don't think any of the sources support it. Hypehuman (talk) 22:53, 15 October 2023 (UTC)