It was the surveillance cameras trained on the dark corners of St Matthias church in the village of Castenray in the Netherlands that caught the creatures in the act.
The video footage is in black and white, the animals are entwined and upside down, and the events that unfold against a metal grill are more frantic than romantic.
But the recording may nonetheless prompt the rewriting of textbooks. Researchers believe the film of serotine bats is the first documented evidence of any mammal mating without intromission. In plain English, that’s having sex without penetration.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It was the surveillance cameras trained on the dark corners of St Matthias church in the village of Castenray in the Netherlands that caught the creatures in the act.
The video footage is in black and white, the animals are entwined and upside down, and the events that unfold against a metal grill are more frantic than romantic.
Instead, they wielded their outsized penis like an extra arm, to push aside the female’s tail membrane and make contact with the vulva.
This confirmed the impressive proportions of the penis but also revealed hairs on the heart-shaped head that may provide sensory feedback when searching for the vulva.
While the footage doesn’t prove non-penetrative sex in mammals, some females were left with fluid on their abdomens, suggesting males had at least attempted to deposit their sperm.
Prof Gareth Jones at the University of Bristol, who won an Ig Nobel prize for documenting fellatio in fruit bats, said he found the evidence convincing, though confirming sperm in the vagina afterwards would prove successful copulation.
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