An illustrated guide to the amazingly multifarious sex lives of animals, from elephants and bonobos to butterflies and bedbugs. There may be nothing unnatural in nature, but nature still encompasses much that seems fantastically strange—the amazingly multifarious sex lives of animals, for example. Sexus Animalis tells us everything we never dreamed we wanted to know about the reproductive systems, genital organs, and sexual practices of animals, from elephants (who masturbate with their trunks) to fruit flies (who produce spermatozoa twenty times their size). In the animal kingdom we find heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual behavior, as well as monogamy, polygamy, and polyandry, not to mention fellatio and many varieties of erections and orgasms. Emmanuelle Pouydebat, a natural history researcher, tells us about gutter penises, double penises, detachable penises, and corkscrew-shaped penises, as well as vaginas built for storage and clitorises with thorns. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s more data about animal penises than animal vaginas and clitorises.) She explains how the ostrich achieves an erection, describes the courtship of pygmy chameleons, and recounts how the female short-beaked echidna chooses a partner. She reports on sexual assault among animals—there’s evidence that half of female mallards are sexually assaulted—and explains how masturbation helps squirrels avoid sexually transmitted diseases. It seems that animals have been composing their own Kama Sutra throughout the ages. Striking color illustrations accompany the text.

Birds do it, bees do it, penguins do it, and orangutans do it. By having sex and giving birth to offspring, animals ensure that their species will survive into the next generation. And in this quest for survival, animals go to great lengths. Some animal mating techniques may strike you as strange or gross, but to the animals themselves, these practices are essential. Animals with the best strategies for choosing mates and making babies ensure that their species live on. Without animal sex, there would be no animal life.

The remarkable and unique ways that male and female animals play out gender roles in nature While we joke that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, our gender differences can't compare to those of many other animals. For instance, the male garden spider spontaneously dies after mating with a female more than fifty times his size. And male blanket octopuses employ a copulatory arm longer than their own bodies to mate with females that outweigh them by four orders of magnitude. Why do these gender gulfs exist? Introducing readers to important discoveries in animal behavior and evolution, Odd Couples explores some of the most extraordinary sexual differences in the animal world. Daphne Fairbairn uncovers the unique and bizarre characteristics of these remarkable species and the special strategies they use to maximize reproductive success. Fairbairn also considers humans and explains that although we are keenly aware of our own sexual differences, they are unexceptional within the vast animal world. Looking at some of the most amazing creatures on the planet, Odd Couples sheds astonishing light on what it means to be male or female in the animal kingdom.

This monograph deals with the philosophical approach of thirteenth-century masters to concrete, practical manifestations of 'quantum ad naturalia' in human lives in their commentaries on Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy, both his genuine works and those then considered genuine. It inquires into what they deemed worthy of philosophical debate regarding this topic and how they tackled it. The first of the two volumes describes the cultural surroundings, the scholars’ way of approaching the topic, and their discourses on the peculiarity (singularity, unity, consistency) of humankind and on its internal differentiation according to gender, stage of life, social stratification, and differences due to ethnic status or geographic (climatic) diversity. This is the first comprehensive source-based study of the subject; it draws heavily on unedited texts.

Until recently, little account has been taken of sex differences in many research studies in psychiatry, medicine and physiology. Subjects of these research studies were mainly men, with most researchers using twice as many males as females in their studies. The need to take a sexually differentiated approach has led to the work described in this b

'Birds do it, bees do it, Even educated fleas do it . . . 'So wrote Cole Porter in his famous song from 1928, 'Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love'. To which Bruce Montague, author of this enlightening and amusing collection, silently replied, 'Yes, but how do they do it?'Birds, Bees and Educated Fleas is an amusing A-Z of the courtship and mating habits of animals - including Homo sapiens sapiens. From well-hung South American drakes to shy camels arranging secret love trysts, female chameleons whose skin darkens when they're no longer in the mood to giraffes who swing their hips and swish their tails when they're feeling frisky, oysters that can change sex pretty much at will to stud rhinoceroses that can copulate three or four times a day for a week, this is a wide-ranging, light-hearted but well-researched look at the world of animal love and lust. Arranged alphabetically by species, here is the perfect handbook for any peeping Tom or Tomasina who wants to know what goes on in the animal world behind the - metaphorical - bedroom curtains.