Why a snow monkey attempting sex with deer is news
A paper recently published by the journal Primates - in fact, the second of its kind – talks about interspecies mating and the causes of it. In the paper, Marie Pelé, describes a male snow monkey’s attempts to have sex with female sika deer in Japan’s Yakushima Island.
It is only the second recorded example of sexual relations between two distantly related species.
The male monkey was observed repeatedly performing sexual activity with two different female deers. One doe ran off but another female did not appear to object, and even licked her side post-coitus. The monkey was also observed protecting the doe and chasing away other male monkeys who came near it. This behaviour was described by the paper as "sexual interaction without penetration".
While Snow monkeys and sika deer are known to have a symbiotic relationship, (the deer eats fruits dropped from the trees by the monkeys and the monkeys groom the deer and occasionally riding on their backs), this aberration clearly points towards a big problem: mate deprivation.
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| Photo: Guardian |
“The most realistic hypothesis would be that of mate deprivation, which states that males with limited access to females are more likely to display this behaviour. Whatever the cause for this event may be, the observation of highly unusual animal behaviour may be a key to understanding the evolution of heterospecific mating behaviour in the animal kingdom,” says Dr Pelé.
There are a few other possible explanations for this behaviour. But they are more unlikely, the paper argues. This may also possibly be a means to learn how to copulate, according to the paper, although Japanese macaques are known to be highly social and, in all probability, if they have to learn to copulate, they could do so by observing their fellows. The only other reported case of sexual interactions between two distantly related species was that of an Antarctic fur seal sexually harassing king penguins. At the end of the mating behaviour, some penguins were killed and eaten.
Well, nature can be weird.