I honestly did not believe I would live long enough to see an article on fellatio in bats, but a newly published study has me seriously rethinking my costume for next Halloween.
The study, published in PLOS is titled Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time and has concluded the following:
"Female short-nosed fruit bats lick their mate's penis regularly during copulation, and that each second of licking results in approximately 6 extra seconds of copulation... Our observations are the first to show regular fellatio in adult animals other than humans."
Plenty of animals will sniff a partner's genitals before and after copulation, but these collaborators from the Guangdong Entomological Institute in China and the School of Biological Sciences in Bristol, United Kingdom have gone where no researchers have apparently gone before in demonstrating actual oral sex.
However, if you watch the video of bat sex, you might notice that the authors of this study have taken a substantial bit of license with what a reasonable person might assume fellatio would include. I'd call it more an occasional lick than satisfying oral sex, although kudos are in the order to the female bat who manages to "fellate" her male partner during the act of coitus proper while hanging from the roof.
To see the video, click here and scroll down to the Supporting Information section of the study, and click on the Video S1 link. DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO AT WORK! (Also keep in mind the first rule of watching porn--human or otherwise: be sure to turn the volume off.)
Readers who are PETA members will be relieved to know that all research was conducted according to protocols approved by the Guangdong Entomological Institute Administrative Panel on Laboratory Animal Care. However, the authors did not file the customary 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement indicating that all participants are of legal age. Nor did the authors include a statement about possible conflicts of interest.
As for bat-human comparisons, the authors did say that the bat penis contains erectile tissue (corpus cavernosa and corpus spongiosum) which is similar to that found in primates and humans.
