Did you stop the rape?
And, just out of curiousity, did the rapee show any signs of emotional trauma? Is that just a human thing.
Welcome to the Straight Dope.
Why would you put your genitalia where feces comes out of?
Please explain how birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some mammals have sex.
This thread wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the Ig Nobel prize-winning discovery of mallard duck homosexual necrophilia.
I’ve witnessed a dog have anal sex with a male cat.
Well, if we’re going for completeness, there’s also:
Just how many gay men have sex within view of lions?
For some reason lions just seem unusually susceptible to the influence of the woke LGBT agenda.
No, not necessarily. Also, although @Tristan mentioned only hormones, I think he likely means instinct in a broader sense.
The degree to which a species finds pleasure in sex will likely be a function of factors like whether individuals have sex multiple times, and how much discretion they have for when to have sex.
If a species must have sex at some particular time, with the first candidate of the preferred gender that they encounter, then the evolutionary selective pressure will just be for that behaviour to be entirely reflexive; pleasurable sensations not required.
Then, I would expect a spectrum between purely instinctive on one end and purely a choice due to conscious awareness of potential pleasure on the other, with species occupying various positions along this spectrum.
That’s like saying that something isn’t green, it’s a color between blue and yellow. You’re describing two synonyms. Pleasure is just the name given to the process by which instinctive drives work.
Which ended up more wasted after the affair? The cat or the dog?
Not at all. If I tap under your kneecap, does it feel good to kick?
One of the primary theories for why conscious beings have pleasure and pain, is that it allows us to make judgements. Eating food is pleasurable to me, but I can forego it if I think something else is more important right now. Alternatively I could choose to do something unpleasant if I think it’s for the greater good.
If I am just doing something reflexively though, there is no need to feel anything, and, more importantly, no evolutionary mechanism that would select any feeling in this case.
That’s a reflex, not an instinct. Reflexes are much simpler, and don’t even involve the brain. You can’t do something as complicated as having sex just by reflex.
“Well, Bob, we won’t be able to outrun that lion that’s approaching, so what do we want to do with our last minute or two on earth?”"
If I seek out someone to tap my kneecap, then it makes sense to assume that I enjoy kicking.
So, yeah, the humping behavior is fairly reflexive; if they are stimulated in the right way, they will go right to town on whatever they are going at (and female dogs this too), whether or not they actually enjoy it. But, if they are seeking out things to hump, then it stands to reason that they do enjoy it.
Yes, to some extent there may be a semantic issue.
Even organisms without brains have a “drive” to do things, from chemotaxis on up. And higher organisms (including humans) certainly also have “drive” to do certain things that don’t pass through higher mental processing for conscious deliberation. I don’t think that’s in dispute.
So if we reserve the word “instinct” for behaviors that are mediated through higher mental processing and subject to conscious deliberation and decision making? Then I think I align with Chronos in saying that emotional states are evolution’s mechanism for implementing instinctive behavior. I’m not sure if it’s precisely correct to call all of these emotional states “pleasure-seeking”, but again that may just be semantics. Obviously we sometimes also have an instinctive emotion-driven urge to fight, even knowing that it is likely to lead directly to pain. But it leads to a higher level of non-physical mental “pleasure” to do so, and perhaps great distress if we capitulate without fighting.
It’s difficult to research such things in animals in a precise manner, because we’re talking about internal mental states. When a bird builds a nest in a specific way at a specific time of year, one imagines that the bird feels strongly that this is the right and proper thing to do, that the bird feels distress if it is unable to do so successfully, and some kind of satisfaction if it does. Is that best described as pleasure-seeking? Only a bird could tell us.
You might want to reconsider your viewpoint that nonhuman females receive no sexual gratification during sex.
Check out comparative physiology. Female animals have clitorises (clitorii?), which are located quite near the vaginal opening, or even in the actual vagina.
Female horses are supposed to be rather prodigiously endowed.
To the best of my knowledge, that organ has only one purpose.
~VOW
I love that there is a person who has an avatar of a hand in a latex glove displaying a modified shocker in this thread…
This is FQ. I’m not sure that rumors like this are appropriate, nobody has ever managed to find one.
I stated fact, and I encourage you to look it up for yourself.
Through my own studies, I learned about the cat clitoris and its location at the entrance of the cat vagina.
Today I Googled “nonhuman mammal clitoris” and discovered the fascinating detail of female horse anatomy.
If you can present evidence to the contrary, I’d be happy to see it.
~VOW