Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae)
When constructing a queer ethology concerned primarily with aberrant sexual behaviour, one has to mention the Adélie penguin. For not only are they among the most southerly distributed of all seabirds - found along the entire Antarctic coast - but they are also one of the most depraved. Just how pervy they are became quickly apparent to George Murray Levick, a scientist with the famous Scott Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). An experienced naturalist, Levick nevertheless found the sight of young male penguins engaging in auto-eroticism, fucking with other males, sexually coercing and abusing young chicks, and attempting to mate with the corpses of dead females, profoundly disturbing.
To be fair, when he'd signed on for the trip he was simply hoping to learn something about breeding habits; he wasn't expecting to witness acts of avian masturbation, homosexuality, gang-rape, and necrophilia and couldn't understand them except in anthro-moral terms (today, observers interpret them as responses by immature and inexperienced birds to false cues).
Struggling to describe what he saw, Levick recorded his original observations in Ancient Greek so that only gentleman scholars, such as himself, would be able to read them. Back in Blighty, however, he produced a short paper in English on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin that was privately circulated amongst a select number of experts thought likely to be interested in tales of hooligan birds causing havoc in the colony via constant acts of depravity.
This paper, based on material deemed to be so shocking that Levick was asked by his publishers to remove it from his original, more comprehensive study in order to preserve public decency, was eventually lost and forgotten about for many decades.
In fact, it wasn't until 2012 when a copy was unearthed by a researcher at the Natural History Museum that the work finally entered into the public arena; a much-needed corrective to all the idealistic penguin propaganda churned out by those who find them not only cute 'n' cuddly, but virtuous ...
Note: readers interested in this material should see Douglas G. D. Russell, William J. L. Sladen and David G. Ainley; 'Dr. George Murray Levick (1876-1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin', in Polar Record, (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Click here to read on penguinscience.com.
To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here.
To read part two - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here.
