

When it comes to sexual promiscuity, Madonna's got nothing on the average free-loving, masturbation-happy bottlenose dolphin.

So I learned this morning at The Sex Lives of Animals, opening today at the Museum of Sex in New York City.

The exhibit contains everything you ever wanted to know about animal sex but were afraid to ask. Heck, it's probably more than you ever wanted to know, much less thought of asking.

Upon entering, wall text informs attendees that animals "participate in an astounding array of sexual behaviors, where all conceivable sex acts and sexual partnerships exist." Indeed they do – and things get crazy well before the sex.

There's the sheer startling variety of animal sexual physiology: in about half the animal kingdom, individuals possess both male and female genitalia. Many species have three genders, if not more. Male Bornean fruit bats have milk-producing mammary glands; female hyenas have a pseudo-penis. Male barnacles are relatively better endowed than any other animal, and some tropical fish switch sex on demand.

Then we start getting into behaviors, which truly are astounding.

Hermaphroditic banana slugs sometimes chew off their own penises. The aforementioned dolphins live in long-term, multiple-partner open relationships. Red deer spontaneously ejaculate by rubbing their antlers against the ground. Bedbug sex is every bit as horrid as you'd imagine. Baboons, bonobos and other primates engage in sex so frequently and variously that one wonders where wildlife documentarians get their G-rated footage.



(And the once-cute prairie vole, insufferable ever since conservatives used them as lessons in purity? They're faithful and monogamous only when their booty calls go unanswered.)

It's quite a show, and its centerpieces – life-size sculptures of copulating animals, including a deer threesome, by Norweigan artist

Rune Olsen – are stunning. But for reasons I'm still trying to explain to myself, I came away slightly unsettled.

"By exploring the most intimate part of life," reads another gallery text, "we can appreciate the significance of research on animal sexuality and, perhaps, extrapolate these concepts to larger issues regarding sexuality in general." A noble goal, no doubt, especially when confronted with the moral opprobrium of bedroom police. Calling homosexuality or most any other sexual behavior "unnatural" is simply inaccurate.

But sex – sexuality – isn't always a matter of mere physicality, or even pleasure. It's psychological; it's emotional; it's more than bodies. And except for the human-like eyes of Olsen's sculptures, that's generally the level at which Sex Lives approaches its subjects.

It's hard to interpet the animals' behavior as anything else than getting their rocks off; and when the sex takes place in a social context, as with primates, it still feels utilitarian rather than personal.

In short, Sex Lives goes a long way to dispelling our sanitized illusions of animal sexuality, but isn't without its own illusions. And in some ways, these make it harder for us to interpret animal sexuality for ourselves, as with the shellbacked mates of Italo Calvino's "The

Loves of the Tortoises," who prompt Calvino to contemplate the nature of eros and union.

Also absent from Sex Lives is love. That condition is not, it seems, uniquely human, and deserves as much consideration as any other in a discussion of sexuality. And as the exhibit correctly places humans on the animal spectrum, one wishes they'd saved a little space for the strangest and rarest of all sexual creatures: happy, faithful lovers.

Images: Elephants photographed by Ronald Magill; sculptures by Rune Olsen, photographed by me.

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