ranierean
Virgil Texas of Chapo Trap House 🚬🚂🐇🦦🦭
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The sex life of mallards is a horror show...
They are trapped by evolutionary dynamics, causing an arms race in violent duck rape.
Most of the ducks form good monogamous pairs, starting with a cute ritual of mutual head bobbing. But there are more males than females, and those excess males aim for the alternative strategy of forced mating.
During this they will ceaselessly hunt the female over land, water, and in the air. They will peck at the back of the head of the female duck until all her feathers are hacked off and she bleeds from her head, in order to subdue her. The female can subsequently die from her injuries, or drown if the forced mating happens on water. It can go on for a long time, with large groups of male ducks raping her in succession.
Through evolution, this has caused an arms race. The female ducks have evolved vaginas that are harder to penetrate, and the male ducks have in turn evolved longer penises. This has gone on for a while, until the male ducks end up having rapidly extendable corkscrew penises that can grow longer than half their body length. Still, female evolution has successfully reduced the risk of successful insemination. Which for the individual female means that she will be raped many more times in order to maximize the odds. The defence mechanisms reduce the risk of insemination from each individual forced mating, but because of the arms race, the ultimate effect over evolutionary time is just to make the rape events more violent and prolonged.
Sometimes if a female duck has been gang raped over multiple sessions, her partner will estimate the chances that he will be the biological father as too low, and abandon her. Bleak.
But it gets even worse. Given that the forced matings often result in insemination, there is a potential evolutionary benefit for the females in getting “good rapist genes”. These genes may be passed on to her sons, who then also have better chance to successfully rape. Regrettably this dynamic does not mean that the female duck could just accept being forced mated with, and try to get through it with minimal opposition and violence. Because if she just lets any duck easily force mate with her, then she won’t get the very best rapist genes. Also in an unusually dark turn of evolutionary dynamics, there are reports that some female ducks seek out rape risks. This could make evolutionary sense if the potential rapist genes are significantly more viable than those of its mate.
They are trapped by evolutionary dynamics, causing an arms race in violent duck rape.
Most of the ducks form good monogamous pairs, starting with a cute ritual of mutual head bobbing. But there are more males than females, and those excess males aim for the alternative strategy of forced mating.
During this they will ceaselessly hunt the female over land, water, and in the air. They will peck at the back of the head of the female duck until all her feathers are hacked off and she bleeds from her head, in order to subdue her. The female can subsequently die from her injuries, or drown if the forced mating happens on water. It can go on for a long time, with large groups of male ducks raping her in succession.
Through evolution, this has caused an arms race. The female ducks have evolved vaginas that are harder to penetrate, and the male ducks have in turn evolved longer penises. This has gone on for a while, until the male ducks end up having rapidly extendable corkscrew penises that can grow longer than half their body length. Still, female evolution has successfully reduced the risk of successful insemination. Which for the individual female means that she will be raped many more times in order to maximize the odds. The defence mechanisms reduce the risk of insemination from each individual forced mating, but because of the arms race, the ultimate effect over evolutionary time is just to make the rape events more violent and prolonged.
Sometimes if a female duck has been gang raped over multiple sessions, her partner will estimate the chances that he will be the biological father as too low, and abandon her. Bleak.
But it gets even worse. Given that the forced matings often result in insemination, there is a potential evolutionary benefit for the females in getting “good rapist genes”. These genes may be passed on to her sons, who then also have better chance to successfully rape. Regrettably this dynamic does not mean that the female duck could just accept being forced mated with, and try to get through it with minimal opposition and violence. Because if she just lets any duck easily force mate with her, then she won’t get the very best rapist genes. Also in an unusually dark turn of evolutionary dynamics, there are reports that some female ducks seek out rape risks. This could make evolutionary sense if the potential rapist genes are significantly more viable than those of its mate.
