I think sex ed is more about not getting pregnant than about how to. Given that people had sex and babies long before there was any understanding of how sex worked, I dispute your premise. We are usually able to figure it out, at least often enough to keep the species going.
I don’t think most animals have a sense of correspondence–that they can imagine themselves as they look to others, and look at other animals and imagine themselves doing the same. It’s one thing to see “when he pushes that button, a door opens, so I am going to push that button” and another to understand how to imitate coitus.
I recall a conversation with some conservative type back in the Good Old Days who was convinced that homosexuality was a learned and conscious choice. (Remember when people tried to push that line? Oh wait, they still try…) I pointed out that nobody taught me what to really appreciate in the female form, or what I liked to ogle and feel up. It’s mapped into our brain regardless, as is also taking care of business on your own. Between instincts and experiments you quickly learn what feels good.
Similarly, gay people have the same urges, but somehow they are mapped to the other gender. Most interviews I’ve read with gay people (never actually personally asked any of them that I knew) they knew their preference far back in their early childhood, even if they didn’t know the physical acts of expression. This suggests that the instincts are in fact instincts, they are part of the actions pre-wired into our brain. However, we have very good learning capabilities, powers of observation, awareness of situations, etc. to see (or even just hear about) and apply lessons learned.
It’s only the social constraints we encounter that try to hide the facts in a futile attempt to prevent us learning about them. Considering it only takes one knowledgeable peer to pass on the information, this is a losing proposition in most societal configurations.
IANA expert on animal sex, but over the years I’ve certainly seen any number of dogs, squirrels, pigeons, or ducks doin’ it in the park. Plus the occasional zoo animals.
I have never seen any of the other animals nearby, regardless of species pay the slightest attention to the couple coupling.
OTOH, I have on rare occasion encountered humans having sex out in the wild. Any other nearby humans were definitely paying attention to the fun.
My conclusion: animals don’t learn by watching because they aren’t watching even when it’s going on all around them. They’re too oblivious to think to watch. People on the other hand watch as often as possible. It’s just that with current social arrangements the opportunities to watch are few and far between. So not a lot of human sex ed happens that way. Pr0n excepted of course.
What Manda Jo and **LSLGuy **said; I don’t think animals learn this by watching at all - I think it was always deeply instinctive (plus, how do some solitary animals “watch” or “learn” how to copulate, then?) But that said, the mental image of several or a crowd of animals closely observing a mating animal couple to learn how it is done, cracks me up.
Forget dog legs; isn’t the running gag, and the I’ve-Seen-That-Too report, that various male dogs will enthusiastically hump various human legs? Also, furniture?
As far as I can tell, they just hump stuff in general, and so they sometimes they wind up humping “other dog’s lady parts” in particular; and, if so, figure they don’t need to realize there’s a connection between that and reproduction.
I seem to remember another thread that queried when humans first made the connection between sex and babies. After all, it’s not as if you have sex and the baby arrives next day - in fact, it’s some time before a woman even becomes aware that she is pregnant, and even longer before it is visible to others.
Cecil column: When did mankind figure out that SEX = BABIES?
Also, thread on this board: Figuring out that sex = reproduction
I believe that for various animals, the female gives off the necessary odor to attract males when in heat. This means that for example dogs, they will indiscriminately hump anything but are drawn to females in heat when available.
But early humans were not that stupid. Plus, language was the major breakthrough in being able to pass on observations. As I said in the earlier thread - only one thing typically went in that female body part, and babies came out. Plus, menstruation stopped within 2 weeks, warning that something was on the way. If early people could identify moving planets in the sky just by observation, I don’t think “where babby come from?” was rocket science.
Jared Diamond has some books - “The Third Chimpanzee” and “Why Sex Is Fun” which discuss reproduction strategies. Solitary animals probably don’t pay attention to coupling by others. Some herd animals probably care more, because along with survival of the herd is “who’s your daddy?”, the need to ensure their personal genetic package gets passed on. One strategy (some chimps?) was that the female when obviously in heat, mated indiscriminately and the paternity was unknown, so the whole pack contributed to feeding the females and children. Another, which we see in animals like horses and deer, is a harem model where the winning male keeps all the females for himself.
We have evolved the monogamy (somewhat) but hidden fertility, where the lack of fertility cues means the male perpetually(!) tries to mate, typically with one female for an extended relationship time, and assumes that the offspring are his, and provides for mother and children. This can also trigger possessive jealousy, and the behavior -seen in Gorillas, IIRC - that a male who takes over top spot may kill the offspring of previous rivals so that he can sooner mate and the children being raised by the female are his.
The overwhelming interest for humans then is “who’s the father?”. there’s a theory that the evolution of speech was driven by the desire to gossip, to pass on information about mating and paternity. (The theory that gossip replaced “picking fleas” as a way to indicate social hierarchy) Even today, the major gossip topic instinctually seems to be who’s mating with whom, and more specifically, who females are mating with.
I seem to recall my zoology prof saying something to the effect of: As a species moves up the development ladder, the reproductive organs become less dominant in the overall functions of the species.
Also, humans are (apparently) the only species that over-rides natural instinct with learned attitudes influencing behavior. Many humans have been successfully taught that sexual expression is something for which they will have undesirable consequences, which works as a deterrent to instinctive behavior.
Another important point is that if an instinctive behavior is not necessary for the survival of the species, it could fade over time as individuals with less of the instinct still manage to breed. So as humans became better and better at “monkey see, monkey do” the need to rely on instinct to drive that behavior is less necessary and it has faded. OTOH, the instinctive urge to actually mate (rather than the mechanics) has certainly not faded.
Learned behavior and restraint are part of all higher species. Big cats, for example (and little ones) learn to hide and wait and pounce at the right time, rather than simply running toward any meal the moment they see it hopping or running by. Wolves cooperate to bring down much bigger game. And so on… we’ve just taken restraint for future benefit to a higher level due to our conceptual thinking abilities.