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Non-Penetrative Sex in Animals
Bonobos

Bonobos participate in both penetrative and non-penetrative sex. Their society is often described as a socio-sexual society (hyperlink?). Studies indicate that Bonobos use sexual contact as a way to defuse aggression and tension, and many are non-penetrative contacts. The primary non-penetrative social sex acts are genital touching and genito-genital rubbing. Genital touching is contact between the recipient’s genitals and a non-genital part of the body; typical genito-genital rubbing occurs between two females, and consists of two females placing their vulvas together and rocking from side to side. Males engage in this act as well, but less frequently, and it takes the form of “penis-fencing,” along with scrotum contact.

They also engage in mounting behaviors, which occur when the actor places their genitals onto the backside of the recipient and moves back and forth or side to side.

Bats

Non-penetrative behavior in bats has been categorized as mounting, genital contact, and genital stimulation, genital licking, and genital biting, and allogrooming, which is a types of caregiving that is performed through physical contact that can use hands, mouth or other parts of the body to touch other animals, occur around copulation. In addition, female short-nosed fruit bats (hyperlink?) lick males’ erect penis during penetrative intercourse and male Indian flying fox bats lick the female bats vulva before and after penetrative sex. This suggests a longer time for copulation which could indicate increase in fertilization or the improvement of sperm production. Grey-headed flying fox bats, P. poliocephalus, in the wild participate in both allogrooming and genital licking between the same sex although it remains unclear if this is widespread or limited to specific populations.

Insects

Some insects will also engage in non-reproductive, non-penetrative sex. The seed beetle in particular engages in male/male and female/female mounting at a very high rate. Mounting behaviors are highly valuable in males, because the more times a particular male mounts another bug, the more chances he has of actually mating successfully. But this leads to confusion around female mounting behaviors. Many older hypotheses claim that it is because it will lead ultimately to more mating with males, but mating is actually very high-cost for females, so to seek out mating opportunities would be counterintuitive.