Handcuffs, Bear-Traps and Spikes Lift the Lid on Some Unique Insect Sexual Habits (Op-Ed)

By James Gilbert, University of Sussex | May 28, 2014 03:59am ET

This article was originally published at The Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Handcuffs, spikes and traps – you would think they were part of some bondage aficionado’s bedroom collection. But what are they doing in the insect world?

A new study I worked on sheds light on why some bushcrickets – usually gentle creatures – get pretty violent when it comes to sex, and in the process helps to settle a decades-old debate about their odd mating habits.

In just a few species of bushcrickets, scattered across the evolutionary tree, we found that males have evolved horrific-looking clasping devices near their genitals. They use them to hold females down for as long as possible after sex is done – that is, after they have transferred all their sperm. This results in long mating sessions, up to seven hours in some cases.

Continued

Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin

'Sexual depravity' of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal Landmark polar research about the Adelie penguin's sex life by Captain  Scott's expedition, deemed too shocking for the public 100 years ago, is unearthed at the Natural History Museum

• Robin McKie, science editor
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 June 2012 11.31 BST

It was the sight of a young male Adélie penguin attempting to have sex with a dead female that particularly unnerved George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. No such observation had ever been recorded before, as far as he knew, and Levick, a typical Edwardian Englishman, was horrified. Blizzards and freezing cold were one thing. 
Penguin perversion was another.

Worse was to come, however. Levick spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 observing the colony of Adélies at Cape Adare, making him the only scientist to this day to have studied an entire breeding cycle there. During that time, he witnessed males having sex with other males and also with dead females, including several that had died the previous year. He also saw them sexually coerce females and chicks and occasionally kill them.

Levick blamed this "astonishing depravity" on "hooligan males" and wrote down his observations in Greek so that only an educated gentleman would understand the horrors he had witnessed. Back in Britain he produced a paper (in English), titled Natural History of the Adélie Penguin. However, the section about the animal's sexual proclivities was deemed to be so shocking it was removed to preserve decency. Levick then used this material as the 
basis for a separate short paper, Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, which was privately circulated among a handful of experts.

In fact, Levick's observations turned out to be well ahead of their time. Scientists had to wait another 50 years before the remarkable sexual antics of the Adélie were revealed. By this time his pamphlet and its detailed records of Adélie shenanigans had been lost to science .

Continued:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/09/sex-depravity-penguins-scott-antarctic