Category Archives: Human Reproduction

How the New Mexico whiptail became a gay icon – High Country News

In the hot sun, the sandstone layers of the canyon were like melting Neapolitan ice cream, the strawberry of the Jurassic entrada liquifying under the weight of vanilla and chocolate. I followed a slim trail of pink puddles through archways of junipers and found myself in the landscape depicted in Georgia OKeeffes 1940 painting Untitled (Red and Yellow Cliffs), a trippy oil that shows the precipice that towers over her beloved Ghost Ranch topped by a tiny slice of blue sky served la mode.

A cloud of bushtits led me to a boulder that had calved off the pastel canyon rim. It was rough as sandpaper and festooned with an eight-inch lizard. She basked in the Southwest rays doing push-ups, displaying her fierce black-and-yellow stripes. When she raised her chin, the powder-blue underside contrasted with the pink hue of the boulder, a color combination that haunted me with visions of viral gender-reveal parties.

How did I know that she was a she? I had stumbled across the internets gay icon of herpetology: the New Mexico whiptail. Over the past decade, Cnemidophorus neomexicanus has become an idol for some queer people, because this species members are all female. They reproduce asexually through a process called parthenogenesis and yet still display sexual behaviors like mounting. Theyve thus been dubbed the leaping lesbian lizard and inspired art, comics, a Pokmon named Salazzle and shelves of online merchandise even the name of an ultimate frisbee team at Wellesley College. One sticker sold on Etsy portrays two lizards in the seven colors of the Sunset Lesbian Pride Flag, their tails curled in the shape of a love heart.

Simply put, parthenogenesis is reproduction without fertilization, Hannah Caracalas, a biologist and board member of the Northern Colorado Herpetological Society, explained. She told me that the process is relatively common in plants, as well as invertebrates such as scorpions, but rare in vertebrates. It does occur in some fish, reptiles and birds; in fact, it was recently observed in a pair of female California condors, though these New World vultures primarily reproduce sexually. Parthenogenesis, however, is well known in certain species of whiptails, including the nearby Colorado checkered whiptail (Cnemidophorus tesselatus), whose reproductive behaviors Caracalas has studied.

There are a series of hormonal triggers that happen around reproduction time that signal to the female to start producing these eggs, Caracalas said. She basically copies her own genetic material and passes it off to her offspring. This means that the mothers and daughters are all clones of each other they have identical genetics.

While the lizards reproduce fully on their own, the New Mexico whiptail and Colorado checkered whiptail both engage in pseudocopulation, in which one lizard mounts another, bites, and hooks its leg around the bottom lizards body, while the two lizards entwine their tails. It is thought that that kind of behavior will start stimulating those hormonal triggers that will lead to ovulation, said Caracalas.

When I found a second whiptail on the south face of the Ghost Ranch boulder, I thought of my dry biology classes in high school and college, and how they were framed through a cisgender and heteronormative bias that excluded the full reality of the natural world: Not all species reproduce via male/female pairs. Many species, in fact, including New Mexico whiptails, lack males altogether, and others, like some marine snails, change genders to mate. This same prejudice has been propagated by everyone from historians and academics to Hollywood producers, who have straight-washed queer people and their relationships, from Susan B. Anthony to the artist Mai-Mai Sze and her partner, Irene Sharaff. Whiptail fans joke on online message boards that the cis-het male biologists of yesteryear must have described the New Mexico whiptail as a species consisting entirely of good friends and roommates.

Our understanding of same-sex sexual behavior in animals has really shifted from when I was a queer youth in the 80s, said Karen Warkentin, a professor of biology and gender and sexuality studies at Boston University. In the past, Warkentin added, information about queer biology was actively suppressed, and scientists were discouraged from studying it. Today, however, many scientists conduct research without these biases, opening the door to a truer understanding of biology.

Take the common name of the mourning gecko, an all-female parthenogenetic species native to Southeast Asia. According to Reptiles Magazine, it comes from a clicking sound they make at night; biologists assumed that they were mourning over never having a male mate. As if. That clicking, along with head-bobbing, is actually a primary form of communication for mourning geckos. A recent study published in Life Sciences Education showed that biases like this in biology courses impacted queer students sense of belonging and career preparation. By erasing the truth of diverse genders and orientations in nature, this bias helps bigots spread the lie that queerness in humans is unnatural, an errant choice. Its reminiscent of todays book bans, which label queer texts as profane in a homophobic effort to skew how we view the world.

But todays scientists are studying and communicating nature to the public as it is. Caracalas, who has been a lizard lover her entire life, said she discovered that she was a lesbian around the same time she began studying the Colorado checkered whiptail. Observing the lizards in the field brought her immense joy at a formative time. Biology has been used as such a weapon against (queer people), she said. But ironically, one of the first things that they teach you in a college biology course is that theres always exceptions to the rule and that nothing ever fits into nice, neat boxes.

Warkentin believes that the New Mexico whiptail inspires the LGBTQ+ community partly because its complex biology has been studied and communicated so effectively by scientists. For me, learning about New Mexico whiptails has not only anchored me more firmly to the high desert landscape we shared that afternoon, but given me yet another example of how the natural world can shatter human prejudices. In short, these lizards have radicalized me.

Miles W. Griffis is a writer and journalist based in Southern California. He writes Confetti Westerns, a serial column that explores the queer natural and cultural histories of the American Southwest.

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The serotine bat is the first mammal known to copulate without penetration – EL PAS USA

Bats are well known for their peculiarities. Between flight and echolocation, the scientific community has been busy unraveling the nature of these behaviors. However, other aspects of their private lives, such as mating, have been less researched. Now, a study published in Current Biology has shed light on another unique feature for a mammal: the bats very long and wide penis, the function of which is not penetration.

Nicolas Fasel is an honorary professor at the University of Lausannes School of Biology and Medicine in Switzerland. By chance, he observed that male serotine bats (Eptesicus serotinus) had an erect penis seven times longer and wider than the females vaginas. Since then, he had been wondering how it was possible for male bats to reproduce with females. Penetration did not seem feasible, but he could not be sure.

One day, he received an email from a Dutch bat enthusiast named Jan Jeuker, who had recorded these animals having sex inside an old church. Between his videos and others taken at a bat rehabilitation center in Ukraine, researchers collected and analyzed 97 sexual encounters.

Indeed, the researchers found that penetration did not occur. The male grasps the female in a dorsoventral position, biting her on the nape of the neck. Between the hind legs and tail, females have a membrane, called the uropatagium, with which they could prevent copulation, but the male uses his long penis as an arm to push this membrane aside and make contact with the vulva.

Once the male bats manage to move the uropatagium out of the way, they must locate the vulva. There are hairs at the tip of the penis that, according to the authors of the study, could serve as a sensor that helps the bat find it. In turn, they have a hollow structure on the dorsal side of the erect penis that could act as a suction cup to maintain contact for a long time. These are not fleeting encounters; half of the recorded copulations lasted for less than 53 minutes, but the longest lasted for over 12 hours.

After mating, the female shows wet abdominal fur, suggesting that ejaculation has occurred. However, the authors acknowledge that they have not yet been able to demonstrate that sperm transfer occurs or how it happens. This could be a future avenue of research.

As Susanne Holtze, a co-author of the study and the senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, explains to CNN, How their semen actually gets into the female reproductive tract is an open question. It may be that there is some kind of suction involved. We cant fully answer what this mechanism consists of.

The serotine bats form of copulation is reminiscent of that of birds and is known as cloacal kissing, in which both sexes press their cloacae together to transfer the sperm. Among mammals, this type of copulation is rare: this is the first documented case of mammals mating without penetration. The studys authors suspect that this must occur in only a few other bat species.

Holtze, who specializes in assisted animal reproduction, believes this discovery may help to successfully inseminate bats. There are over 1,000 species of bats and many of them are also endangered, she explains. So far, an adequate strategy for assisted reproduction has not been established.

These male serotine bats are not the only chiroptera with peculiar genitals. We have known since 1859 that the females of many bat species can store sperm. This is because the cervix, which connects the uterus to the vagina, is particularly long. In temperate climates, bat copulation usually occurs in August and September, but females do not ovulate until after hibernation, in April and May. Thus, they are able to store sperm for seven months.

This isnt the first time that we have been surprised by the sexual habits of bats. In 2009, the journal PLoS One published a study documenting for the first time that fruit bats (Cynopterus sphinx) practice oral sex. Until then, there had been hardly any recorded cases of non-human animals performing fellatio. Sexual play between juvenile bonobos (Pan paniscus) was the only exception.

The authors of this study observed that females were not passive during copulation but instead regularly licked their partners penis. As the researchers explain, this behavior could have adaptive benefits: For every second that females licked the males penis, copulation was prolonged by approximately six seconds. It is possible that this is because fellatio lubricates the penis and increases stimulation, the researchers speculate. They add: In turn, prolonged copulation could facilitate the transport of sperm from the vagina to the oviduct, or stimulate secretions from the females pituitary gland, thereby increasing the likelihood of fertilization. It could also be that the females saliva has bactericidal properties and thus helps in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

It is likely that we will learn more peculiarities about bats sex lives in the coming years, since it is an underexplored field that is beginning to generate more interest. Fasels team is already investigating penis morphology and copulation in other bat species. We are trying to develop a porn booth for bats, which will be like an aquarium with cameras everywhere, the professor joked to the Spanish scientific media outlet, SINC.

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The serotine bat is the first mammal known to copulate without penetration - EL PAS USA

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Inside One of the Largest Collections of Sex Artifacts – Hyperallergic

It might come as a surprise to learn that the state of Indiana has one of the worlds largest collections of sex-related artifacts. Fully integrated with Indiana University in Bloomington as of 2016, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, founded in 1947 by American sexologist Alfred Kinsey, houses over 650,000 items spanning 2,000 years of human sexuality.

With nearly a decade of experience as the Institutes curator and traveling exhibitions manager, Rebecca Fasman talked to Hyperallergic about the most interesting objects and artworks in the collection from sex toys across centuries to historical photographs of transgender activism in the United States and contemporary artworks addressing sex and gender. These artifacts, she noted, do not have a particular theme; rather, they are opportunities to dive deeper into parts of human history, American history, and the global understanding of how sex has existed in various ways in various cultures around the world.

A woodblock Shunga (erotic art) print from 19th-century Japan portrays two women engaging in sexual intercourse with the use of a strap-on dildo a depiction that Fasman notes was rare during this time period in Japan, but not unheard of. The Institutes library also owns a number of Japanese strap-on dildos, including one from the 1800s that was carved from bone.

Its a really cool part of our collection to be able to match an artwork with an object from the same time period, she said. We know that strap-ons were a thing that existed, so I would argue that sex toys have existed throughout the millennia of human existence.

On the topic of sex toys, another fascinating object with an equally fascinating name is the Accu-jac Pneumatic Penis-Milker, produced by a company known as Jac-Masters and archived with its accompanying order form. The name leaves little to the imagination, but for those who might be thrown off by the covert toolbox appearance, the device is activated by a motor that sends air currents through a narrow tube connected to a latex sleeve that fits over a penis. No longer in circulation, the devices were trademarked in 1973 as motor-operated vacuum-type massage instruments for massaging the human body.

Apparently, the specimen in the Kinsey Institute collection is on the lower end of Jac-Masterss products, as there are ads for partner-friendly devices that cost upwards of $700. Fasman specified that ads and order forms for these devices were usually restricted to LGBTQ+, underground, and adult magazines.

While theres evidently lots of fun to be had as a party of one, Fasmans round-up also includes archival prophylactics for two or more. Venereal disease, particularly syphilis, was a major and often deadly problem among soldiers during World War I, and the military began distributing V-Packettes produced by the pharmaceutical company John Wyeth and Bro Inc. between 1940 and 1949 in an effort to combat the spread. The packets came with calomel ointment, silver picrate, cleansing wipes, and directions that note that the included contents are for prevention only, not a cure.

Even at a time when sexuality being controlled pretty aggressively through the government through anti-obscenity laws and such, there was an understanding, at least amongst the military, that people are going to have sex and that it is better to have healthy soldiers than ones that contract a disease, Fasman said.

On the other hand (or other body part of your choice), Fasman also picked out some latex novelty condoms preserved in bell jars full of nitrogen gas to prevent degradation. Bejeweled or representational, theyre strictly for eyes only and should not be put outside or inside anybody.

A little further back in time, one of the oldest objects in the Institutes collection is a carved stone Egyptian ithyphallic figure dated around 1000 BCE, most likely used as a fertility or protection amulet. The collection also houses a near-complete copy of the c. 1610 book Su Wo pien (Lady of the Moon) from the Ming Dynasty in China, with intricate drawings of sexual intimacy amid the natural world. The Institutes Library and Special Collections Director Liana Zhou wrote an article about the social significance of Su Wo pien, noting that it portrayed a very obvious Taoist theory on sexuality throughout its entirety of 90 illustrations and 43 chapters.

Expanding on the intersection of sexuality and nature, Fasman shared that she was most excited about the work of late photographer Laura Aguilar, a plus-sized, working-class queer-identifying Chicana woman who integrated her figure into organic environments in acts of communing throughout her practice.

Earlier this year, Indiana legislators voted to defund the Kinsey Institute on the basis of child safety concerns, putting the research centers financial status at risk. Regarding the expansion of Kinsey Institutes archive, Fasman explained that while donations come in regularly, she is working on developing an acquisition budget to ethically source more content for the library and special collections.

We should have more artwork about sexuality by Black and Indigenous artists, by artists of color and queer artists and disabled artists and all marginalized communities whose perspectives have not been given the attention that they should, Fasman said.

For those outside of Indiana who would like to see some of the collection in person, Fasman has curated an upcoming show at the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum in Miami Beach that is set to open on Monday, December 4 in alignment with Miami Art Week.Bettina Rheims: Everything All At Oncefeatures 12 rarely seen photos taken by the French photographer between 1989 and 1991 that explore gender identity and presentation at the height of the AIDS crisis.

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Inside One of the Largest Collections of Sex Artifacts - Hyperallergic