Did you know that fruit bats are the only non-primate to engage in oral sex?
Source: PLoS ONE: Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time
Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile males. The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx exhibits resource defence polygyny and one sexually active male often roosts with groups of females in tents made from leaves. Female bats often lick their mate’s penis during dorsoventral copulation. The female lowers her head to lick the shaft or the base of the male’s penis but does not lick the glans penis which has already penetrated the vagina. Males never withdrew their penis when it was licked by the mating partner. 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. Males also show postcopulatory genital grooming after intromission. At present, we do not know why genital licking occurs, and we present four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that may explain the function of fellatio in C. sphinx.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1030/2 :
“Zhang and colleagues have a few theories as to why the females would want to increase the length of intercourse. One idea is that it may facilitate sperm transport. Or it could keep males occupied—and thus away from rival females.
Fellatio may also offer protection against sexually transmitted diseases, based on the antimicrobial properties of saliva. Many male animals, including short-nosed fruit bats, lick their genitals after copulation, and in some species this has been shown to reduce the incidence of such diseases.
“The finding of fellatio in bats is exciting news,” says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta who has worked extensively with bonobos. He says that although the behavior is likely rare, it may be more common than we think. “Part of the reason fellatio is rarely mentioned is shyness about this issue.” The observation provides a unique opportunity to test some theories about the evolutionary role of fellatio, adds Paul Vasey, a behavioral scientist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Although it’s possible, he says, that bats are just being sexually playful, like their human and bonobo counterparts.”
