Surprising discovery about the sexual life of dolphins

Scientists know that dolphins are very social. They have sex throughout the year as a way to forge and maintain social ties EFE/Clearwater Marine Aquarium

Female dolphins have a clitoris-like structure located at the entrance to the vagina, with many sensory nerves and erectile bodies, according to a study published in Current Biology.

“The dolphin clitoris has many features that suggest it functions to provide pleasure to females,” explains first author Patricia Brennan, assistant professor of biological sciences at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, United States.

Scientists know that dolphins are very social. They have sex throughout the year as a way to forge and maintain social bonds.

Female dolphins have also been observed to have a clitoris in the vagina in a location that would make stimulation during copulation likely. In the new study, Brennan and her colleagues decided to take a closer look at the dolphins’ clitoris. They carefully observed the clitorises of 11 females who had died naturally for the presence, shape, and configuration of the erectile bodies.

They also looked at how the nerve fibers ran through the tissues. What they saw supports the notion of a functional clitoris in dolphins. “Like the human clitoris, the dolphin clitoris has large areas of erectile tissue that fill with blood,” says Brennan.

In the new study, Brennan and her colleagues decided to take a closer look at the dolphins’ clitoris. They carefully observed the clitoris of 11 females

The shape of erectile tissue changes as the animals become adults, he adds, suggesting that it takes on a functional role. Studies further show that the body of the clitoris has large nerves and many free nerve endings just below the skin, which is much thinner there than on the adjacent skin.

They also found genital corpuscles very similar to those described above in the human clitoris and at the tip of the penis, which are known to be involved in the pleasure response. Overall, Brennan says that dolphin erectile bodies are “strikingly similar” to the shape of human erectile bodies.

“Since the entire dolphin pelvis is so different from that of humans, it was surprising to see how similar the shapes were,” he said. Also very surprising was the size of the nerves in the body of the clitoris. Some were more than half a millimeter in diameter.”

Brennan recalls that they became curious about the dolphin clitoris while studying the evolution of dolphin vaginas. “Every time we dissected a vagina, we would see this clitoris that was so big, and we were curious to see if anyone had really looked at it to see if it functioned like a human clitoris,” she says. We knew that dolphins have sex not only to reproduce, but also to solidify social bonds, so it seemed likely that the clitoris could be functional.”

“We knew that dolphins have sex not only to reproduce, but also to solidify social bonds, so it seemed likely that the clitoris could be functional,” said one of the researchers.

The researchers note that the clitoris and female sexual pleasure in nature have been little studied. In fact, even the human clitoris wasn’t fully described until the 1990s.

“This neglect in the study of female sexuality has left us with an incomplete picture of the true nature of sexual behaviors,” Brennan laments. “Studying and understanding sexual behaviors in nature is a fundamental part of understanding animal experience and may even have important medical applications in the future.”

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