Bat Fellatio Researchers Get (Dis)Honorable Prize

Fruit Bats getting freaky! Click to see a video of the oral sex in question.

The folks over at the Annals of Improbable Research sure know how to grab some head-scratching attention. Their yearly Ig Nobel prize takes the most ridiculous findings and holds them high on a pedestal to, according to their website, “Make people LAUGH, then THINK.” This year’s Ig Nobel honors, held last week, produced some great winners: scientists who found a way  to capture whale snot, Dutch researchers who discovered that roller coaster rides can help treat asthma, and so many more. But this year, one winner stood out among others.

The winners of this years Biology Ig Nobel Prize discovered that the Greater Short-nosed Fruit Bat uses fellatio in mating. Yes, you read that right. Fellatio. Oral sex is a common practice among humans, but it’s rarely documented in animals. Few species have been documented as performing oral sex, but for the fruit bat it seems to provide a practical purpose.  According to the abstract of the paper,

A positive relationship exists between the length of time that the female licked the male’s penis during copulation and the duration of copulation. Furthermore, mating pairs spent significantly more time in copulation if the female licked her mate’s penis than if fellatio was absent.

Aside from the explosion of sex jokes that is bound to come from this research, these scientists, who mostly hail from China, have stumbled upon another interesting phenomena. That, of course, is the amount of effort animals exert when trying to prolong mating (for every second that fellatio occurred, there was six more seconds of mating). Just as humans use foreplay to keep their mating experience going (perhaps for more pleasure than anything else), it is likely (but not yet proven) that the fruit bat’s activities produce many more baby bats in the long run.

From the 20 copulations that the team witnessed, a resounding 70% of those involved oral sex. But, there seems to be no demonstrated social hierarchy for those bats who performed fellatio and those who do not. In fact, according to the report, “It is conceivable that the female manipulates the male by increasing sexual stimulation, so that she ultimately benefits.”

Either way, it definitely produces some award-worthy research. Who knew bats were so freaky?

To see more winners of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize, click here.

All quotes from the report were taken from here.

About Lauren Hockenson

Lauren Hockenson (CAS/COM '11) is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Quad.

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