Monkeyrezza...

I can't think of a way to phrase this that doesn't seem like an odd admission, but, I've been interested in the mating of primates lately and have been doing some reading. A few tidbits that I found interesting, then the real interesting bit.

- First, the eternal question, raised yet again: why does a gorilla pull away after sex?" (Also, why does a crowd laugh knowingly?)
- Second, always groom your harem: "It is the females who decide, by collective decision, whether to desert to a new male...females often "disagree" about which male is to be preferred. Each individual female's degree of loyalty to the existing male appears to be determined in large part by the amount of time the male has spent grooming, or affiliating, with the female."
- Also, monkeys form male/female friendships, apart from any dominance hierarchy: "What made Friends special was, most of all, the unusual quality of their interactions. Female baboons, in general, are wary of males. This is understandable: Males sometimes use their larger size and formidable canines to intimidate and bully smaller troop members. Females, however, were apparently drawn to their male Friends, and they seemed surprisingly relaxed around these hulking companions. The males, too, seemed to undergo a subtle transformation when interacting with female friends. They appeared less tense, more affectionate, and more sensitive to the behavior of their partners."

Which was oxytociny and cute, but led into the lightbulb sentence: "...Males copulated with their female Friend about twice as often as would be expected on the basis of the overall pattern of sexual activity within the troop...and are 50% more likely to ejaculate when copulating.

Implication being that male ejaculation when copulating was not universal. (!) Sure enough, I found a study of another monkey -- (ignore the bits about noise-making - heh) -- that put the overall ejaculation rate at only a little higher than 50%. I had no idea.

So, aside from it being slightly cool and affirming to the karezza idea that animals are having non-ejaculatory matings, it's been interesting to consider why, over the eons, animals would have developed the behavior, there would be a purpose for it. I've thought of copulation as fertilization, and, separately, copulation as orgasm, but this is copulation as copulation.

Monkeys aside, a problem with words is that they can drag along associations that muddy the true meaning. The words "sex", "copulation", "coitus", etc., always, in my head, had the implication of an act completed at male ejaculation. But, female orgasm is never considered in counting whether or not sex was had, and, in an infidelity scenario, there'd be no Clintonian excuse allowed that sex wasn't sex because an orgasm didn't take place. So, "sex" is just what we call "having sex", and is a destination/event/action in and of itself; non-ejaculatory coitus isn't "one hand clapping" - it's sex.

Always exciting to finally realize the obvious, and somehow this was an "aha!" that reshuffled the deck between my ears. Good to know.