While one way to interpret such findings would be through attributing traits of chivalry and gallantry to these affable creatures, a more pragmatic interpretation is realizing that the males move as much to restrict sexual access to their females. Yet, it is among the so-called higher animals such as dolphins and apes-who by virtue of their higher intelligence and sociability are more in the likeness of man-that females are harmed and coerced with the explicit motive of subjugation.Ī revelatory set of studies in the 1980s and 1990s by Richard Connors, who is now at the University of Massachussetts, Dartmouth, on bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia showed how these extremely friendly and social creatures formed alliances to guard the females of their group against rape. Disgruntled males rape to maximize their chances of passing on their genes when the conventional methods of wooing, seductive bird calls and strutting, don’t seem to be working.
No doubt there is such a thing as forced copulation in the animal kingdom that is often violent, and observed in many species of insects and birds such as the mariticidal praying mantis, and among ducks and geese drakes, more often than not, force themselves on ducks.Įvolutionary biology usually explains such violence in terms of sexual access.
