The Birds and the Porcupines

Here's some fun information for Masturbation Month, I found out yesterday that female porcupines use sex toys. How awesome is that? Porcupines have been noted picking out sticks and grinding against them. You go girls! This made me wonder, what other animals are known to masturbate? Turns out, almost all of them. - monkeys of all kinds are pretty infamous self-pleasurers - horses and elephants get their freak on by grinding up against objects like tree stumps and rocks - horses continue to masturbate even after they've been castrated - birds are also known to get off by grinding against objects and female birds of some species have been observed using their tails to push sticks inside of themselves - female kangaroos have also been observed using sticks as dildos It's apparent that masturbation is common in the animal kingdom. What does that mean? Honestly, not much at all. We are constantly trying to compare ourselves to animals in order to learn or, more commonly, to justify our viewpoints about what is natural and what is not in human behavior. This is a losing proposition, and we've seen it with the arguments against homosexuality. The argument was often made that homosexuality is unnatural because you don't see it in the animal kingdom. Then we found out that no, actually, it's pretty darned common among a lot of animals. (my sister and I each had a rabbit and they were both females - those two were constantly getting up on each other). Suddenly the argument changed and people started saying that clearly homosexuality is something that is part of our baser, more animal nature, that human beings should be above. You can't win this argument. So does the fact that porcupines use dildos mean that masturbation is natural? No, it's just cool. And I just really wanted to write about animals that use dildos.