When It Comes to Sex, We Are All Animals

Baboon Swollen BumIt doesn’t pay for animals to miss out on reproductive opportunities. That’s why when a female baboon is at the peak of her fertility cycle, her buttocks get red and swollen, thereby alerting males to their reproductive opportunity. Cattle, too, try to take advantage of fertility, with females getting quite frisky when they are in heat. In fact, the word estrus, which scientists use to denote the fertile part of a female’s cycle, is derived from the Greek word “oistros,” which means gadfly. The word captures the frenzied behavior of cattle being pestered by insects.
Baboon buttocks. Cow hyperactivity. That’s how animals behave. Clearly we humans have evolved beyond such primitive behavior!
Well, yes and no. (Read more at Forbes.com)

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