Bat uses its huge penis like an arm during sex

Male serotine bats have a bizarrely lengthy penis with a heart-shaped head that they use like an arm throughout intercourse.

“Bats are fairly attention-grabbing in many alternative facets of their biology,” says Nicolas Fasel on the College of Lausanne in Switzerland. For instance, they live relatively long lives for his or her small physique measurement; some reportedly surpass 40 years previous.

“Their replica can be fairly wonderful,” says Fasel. Some female bats can retailer sperm of their uterus for a number of months after mating, and short-nosed fruit bats have been noticed performing fellatio on their companions throughout intercourse.

Now, Fasel and his colleagues have discovered that serotine bats (Eptesicus serotinus), a standard species discovered throughout Europe and Asia, additionally reproduce in a singular method.

The staff recorded movies of serotine bats within the attic of a church within the Netherlands and a bat rehabilitation centre in Ukraine. They seen that males have a disproportionately massive penis – extending to 22 per cent of the bat’s peak throughout erections – with a tip formed like a coronary heart. That’s round seven instances longer than the feminine bat’s vagina, says Fasel.

After analysing 97 mating occasions that have been captured on digicam, the staff realised that these bats would not have penetrative intercourse.

As a substitute, the male bats use their erect penises to push the protecting membrane across the females’ vulvas out of the way in which. As soon as the tip of the penis meets their mate’s vulva, the copulating bats keep nonetheless in a prolonged embrace for so long as 12.7 hours.

The feminine bats’ abdomens regarded moist after these interactions. The researchers suppose that is semen, although Fasel says they want swab assessments to substantiate this.

“That is the primary time we’ve seen mammals reproduce the place there is no such thing as a penetration,” says Fasel.

The staff now hopes to review the bats in nearer quarters to confirm whether or not sperm switch really happens throughout these occasions and to grasp why bats advanced this distinctive technique to have intercourse.