Animal Planet

Spring is here; the birds announced its arrival already in March. No more waking up to screaming children who have to go to school at six in the morning. They were replaced by birdsong. The nights on the weekends will soon be filled with the whimsical moaning of cats choosing the spot under my window as the best for mating. Ever since I realized that this sound is not emitted by the child next door, when I saw our domestic rabbit jumping on the couch and humping every human hand and the dog gently biting every human leg, I started watching Animal Planet. I was getting familiar with the ways of mating. It was just starting to snow lightly, and the birdsong fell silent. I had no choice but to crawl into bed and refresh my memory. 

Even though they are squeezing hard, are tirelessly rushing towards their goal, and their hearts are beating so hard that you might think they will have a stroke, I was not attracted to the matting of domestic mammals. I was much more interested in other animal species, those in which I would not even dream of imagining how they are creating offspring. Have you ever wondered how snakes, alligators, penguins, kangaroos, bees, and hedgehogs breed? Oh yes, the animal kingdom is much more exciting and kinkier than ours.

Snakes love orgies - one female, several males. Each of them has two hemipenes and two reservoirs of sperm, which allows them to mate with two females in a short time. These two penises are safely tucked away in the cloaca and peek out only during the mating season. Next, the male bites the female's neck and wraps himself tightly around her. Snake sex then lasts from one hour to a full day. In some species of snakes, the female keeps the sperm for up to a year and then decides which one she will use. 

They don't have two penises like snakes, but alligators are known to have a full-time erection. They sleep, eat, and live with a boner. Of course, they are not exactly showing it around, but they have it stored in a cloaca like snakes. They emit engine-like sounds and stage an actual dance of water drops to attract the female. What happens underwater when the male and female find each other is left to the imagination. 

The third animal wonder is a kangaroo. Not because of the mating process itself, but because the female kangaroo has three vaginas. Make no mistake, there is only one tunnel connecting the vagina and the outside world. Three vaginas allow a kangaroo to have three cubs in a row. The same goes for koalas, wombats, and Tasmanian devils. 

Under the equator, you can find another animal that enjoys long and devastating sex. Unlike sloths, whose sex lasts only a few minutes and still have to take breaks in between, the sex of an antechinus lasts fourteen hours. Males of this species live hard and die young. When they reach sexual maturity and produce enough semen, they embark on the destructive path of sex. Their hair falls out, hormones flood the body, and the immune system begins to fail. In other words, they start to disintegrate in the living body, and they are still searching for females. They inseminate as many as they can until they run out of fuel. When the task is done, he falls down and dies. He lived for sex and got killed because of it. 

The fate of the male honey bee is similarly cruel. For a female bee to become a queen, she must get rid of the 'virgin' label. And that chosen one who is willing to help her out should think twice before committing to this heroic act. The drone's 'penis' is torn off at the end of mating. This one stays in the bee, and the male dies. Even in hens, the female has all the cards in her hands. Although the rooster is beautiful and more colorful than the female, the hen does not have to choose it. The rooster is stronger, so the hen does not resist much when mating. The hen wins the war when the poor man wins the battle and enjoys the sweet moments of feeling nothing. If she does not like the male, she can prevent insemination and excrete up to 80% of the semen.

But not everything is terrible: there are also romantic souls in the animal world - penguins. Animals that drag their asses on the floor all day have been the target of interest among humans. Among other things, we had a hard time imagining how they mate. In fact, it is nothing special: the female lies down with her belly on the floor, moves her tail away, and the cloacas merge. Nothing romantic to see there. The same goes for porcupines - they are not romantic but rather kinky. After continuous fights for the female, the winner climbs a tree and pees on a female (Golden shower it is!), then she puts down her spines, and the male climbs on her and finishes in a few seconds. Similarly, only without peeing is the mating of hedgehogs.

The following day I was awakened again by birdsong. Just as it arrived, the snow was gone, and there was a smell of spring in the air. Instincts in animals and more frequent tingling in humans will soon be aroused. The desire to mate is the strongest instinct, which even death can't overcome.