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Our top 20 sexy beasts

Bdelloid rotifer
Among biologists, the bdelloid rotifer has been called an evolutionary scandal, having done without sex – and males – for about 85 million years. Females just seem to produce eggs that hatch into more bdelloids without fertilization. That is, they reproduce asexually, and have done so for a very long time. This contradicts the usual theory that without sex to produce new combinations of genes, a species is doomed. And if the bdelloid rotifers can live for millions of years without sex--why can't the rest of us?

Black vulture
Black vultures engage in one of the most deviant behaviours in biology – they are monogamous. They tend to build their nests apart from other vultures and are fiercely territorial when it comes to protecting the nest. Although there would appear to be lots of opportunity for being unfaithful when one of the pair is sitting on the eggs and the other is off foraging, these birds have a social convention that helps prevent this. Apparently, black vultures insist that sex be conducted in the privacy of the nest and won’t tolerate lewd behaviour in public. If a young bird who doesn’t know better tries to get laid at a roost, the poor creature will be roundly attacked by the other vultures in the vicinity. Who’d have thought black vultures would be so prudish?

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Deep-sea anglerfish
Anglerfish live in the complete darkness of the ocean depths, where potential mates don’t come along very often. Luckily for the male, female anglerfish are not only comparatively huge but also very smelly, so the males dart through the depths searching frantically for a female, guided only by their noses - which are the largest, compared to the size of the fish, of any vertebrate. Once the male has sniffed out a female he swims up and clamps down on her with an unshakable bite. His teeth and jaw recede, the skin fuses and the blood systems of both animals merge. The female, who may have as many as six males attached, has a guaranteed supply of sperm, and the male is taken care of the rest of his life.

Dolphin
Like many marine mammals, including the whales, dolphin courtship and lovemaking are hardly private affairs. The rest of the gang always wants to join in – or at least have a good look. The bottle-nosed dolphin is broad-minded in its choice of sex partners. Males are frequently sighted copulating with turtles (they insert their penises into the soft tissues at the back of their victim’s shell), with sharks, and even with eels (when a dolphin’s penis is erect is has a hook on the end, and many a male will use it to hook a writhing, struggling ell). So it should be no surprise that males also copulate with each other, inserting their penises into each other’s genital slits. The Amazon River dolphin, or boto, sometimes goes further, penetrating another dolphin’s blowhole.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Fruit fly
It takes the fruit fly Drosophila bifurca three weeks to make just one sperm. The adult male is 3mm (0.1in) long and the sperm is a rather disproportionate 58mm (2.3in).Drosophila melanogaster’s sperm on the other hand is 1.9mm (0.07in) long, and this fruit fly can begin copulating only a few hours after he tumbles out of his pupa.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Giant garden slug
When two hermaphroditic (possessing both male and female reproductive organs) slugs decide to mate, they climb to some elevated place, for example in a bush. After following each other around in a circle for as long as two and a half hours, the two animals entwine and drop from the perch, hanging suspended by a tough mucus strand that may be as long as 25cm (10in). While entwined, each snail everts its penis to its full length of another 10cm (4in), and the mutual exchange of spermatozoa occurs while these penises are wrapped around each other. Both slugs will later lay a clutch of transparent eggs on moist ground under stones or other objects.

Giant tortoise
The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands probably only reach sexual maturity at the age of about 40. Males have a concave groove to the base to their shell and mount the females from behind, bringing their tail, which houses the penis, into contact with the female’s genital region. Mating may last for several hours and the males often roar hoarsely as they ‘get into the groove’.

Giraffe
Mating occurs year-round and a male will constantly roam around in search of sexually receptive females. When a male comes across a female, he will often induce her to urinate, then taste-test the urine to determine whether she is receptive. If the results are positive, he proceeds to court her, following her determinedly over a period of hours or even days in order to mate with her. The courtship of giraffes is not elaborate, and mostly consists of the male trailing behind the female and occasionally attempting to mount her. The female repeatedly resists these mounting attempts, by walking forward unconcernedly. This prolonging the courtship period may be so that if a more dominant male comes along, he can displace the male who is courting her.

Honeybee
When a male honeybee reaches his climax, he explodes, his genitals ripped from his body with a loud snap. As many as 25,000 males may assemble to contend for a single queen, who takes to the skies and will mate with any male who can catch her. So by leaving his genitals inside the queen bee, the male bee hopes to prevent other males copulating with her, thus allowing his sperm to fertilize a larger proportion of her eggs and ensuring more of his genes will be passed on to the next generation.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Kissing gourami
In this species of air-breathing fish, their enthusiasm for kissing is such that a pucker may last as long as 25 minutes. However, this action is not a sign of affection, but is more likely to be a display of aggression. In fact, this ‘kissing’ is mostly used for scraping algae off rocks. As far as their sex life goes, when giant gouramis are ready to breed, they build a nest of plants at the surface of the water, suspended by bubbles. The fish spawn and the fertilized eggs are guided into the nest where they develop, protected by the male.

Ladybird
Ladybirds are remarkably promiscuous. As many as a thousand individual ladybirds have been observed aggregating, apparently for the purpose of having sex – and apparently just for the hell of it. During these aggregations the beetles copulate often, but no ovipositing (egg-laying) females or larval ladybird beetles can be observed. Incidentally, ladybirds have the highest prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases of virtually any insect. And London ladybirds are top of the STD league, with more than 90 per cent being affected.

Mandrill
Mandrill males are impressive chaps. The face, which is deeply grooved, is scarlet in the central area and bluest on the sides. His hindquarters are hairless and vividly coloured: the area around the anus is scarlet, and the calluses are pink and violet. The genitals themselves are pink and red. Alpha males are bigger and more ornamented then subordinate males, and the females actively solicit matings from these show-offs. Females advertise their sexual receptiveness with a swollen perineum (near the reproductive region). Although mandrills may live in social groups of 200 or more individuals, each dominant male will have his own harem of five to 10 females and their young.

Octopus
Octopuses use a modified arm in mating but it does not function as a mammalian penis as Aristotle thought. During mating, a spermatophore (a packet containing sperm) is passed into a groove in the male’s third right arm and then transferred into the oviduct of a female. This arm can also be used to remove sperm from her previous encounters with different males. During mating, octopuses may employ either male on top (‘mounted mating’) or side-by-side (‘distance mating’). During distance mating, the modified arm is extended some distance to reach the female. Panamanian tree frog
The male and female tree frog squirt sperm and eggs in joint shudders of spawning. While they appear to be disobeying the amphibian’s golden rule: ‘Keep your babies wet!’ - the tadpoles, upon hatching, will in fact drop into a pond beneath the carefully chosen leaf on which their wet jelly nurseries were laid.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Praying mantis
When a male praying mantis is on the female’s back – the position in which intact males have sex – he is safe from attack. However, getting to that position of safety is the problem, as females would much rather rip off the male’s head, causing his body to go into spasms that allow his genitalia to connect with hers. When he loses his head, the messages from the brain that inhibit sexual behaviour cease – and he turns into a sex fiend. He can copulate when there’s almost nothing of him left. And he has provided his partner with a substantial meal too.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Red deer
During the breeding season, red deer stags spend most of their time roaring. It used to be thought that roaring was simply a kind of ritual fighting, a contest to see who is stronger. But a stag with a harem roars much more than he needs to if intimidating the opposition is the only aim. He’ll typically roar at least twice a minute all day and all night. Small wonder than after a couple of weeks he’s exhausted. It’s worth it though. For females, roars are an aphrodisiac: females exposed to vigorous roaring come into heat sooner than females who are not, and females who conceive earlier in the breeding season give birth earlier the following spring and are more likely to have their calves survive. By the way, male red deer masturbate by rubbing the tips of their antlers through the grass. The whole act takes 15 seconds from start to spurt, and during the breeding season some stags masturbate several times a day.

Salamander
Salamander courtship involves the male and female doing a dance in which he leads and she follows behind. The male deposits a spermatophore (a packet of sperm) on the ground, and she then sits on it. The package is picked it up into her reproductive tract, where it explodes.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation
Seahorse
It’s role-reversal time as the female seahorse deposits eggs into a pouch on the male’s abdomen. The male then releases sperm into the pouch, fertilizing the eggs. The embryos develop within the male’s pouch, nourished by their individual yolk sacs. After the embryos have developed, the male gives birth to tiny seahorses.

Spotted hyena
Female spotted hyenas are bigger and more aggressive than the male of the species, and their dominance makes the males unusually submissive. The reason for this is that the female produces male sex hormones, which have the additional effect of making the female genitalia looking very similar to that of the male. Indeed it was falsely believed for a long time that hyenas were hermaphrodites and could change their sex. The pseudopenis, which is erectile, is in fact an elongated clitoris and the pseudoscrotum consists of fatty tissue. Copulation is a complicated business with the vagina being entered and exited through the pseudopenis. When a mother gives birth for the first time, the clitoris tears to let the cub out. This is not just agonizing, it’s often lethal.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

Stick insect
Stick insects are among the world’s most tireless lovers. They copulate continually for as long as 10 weeks, so the male can guarantee that no else gets a look in. Luckily he’s only half the female’s length so he’s not too heavy to carry about.

Text adapted in part from Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

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