When people think about animal sex, they generally think about the type of mating habits that we've all seen on the Discovery Channel. With animals, we think that the sex is all about procreation and there is nothing more into that simply that.

Well, the exhibit, The Sex Lives of Animals that is hosted in Manhattan's Museum of Sex attempts to get it out of mind that animals only have sex to procreate and that it actually may be a lot more about pleasure than we may think.

From Sexual cannibalism to actual Necrophilia in the animal kingdom, this exhibit will enlighten you to all of the different types of sex that animals practice. I was pleasantly surprised at how informative the exhibit was because I simply expected only sculptures of animals romping for some reason. However, the exhibit provides a few life like sculptures to further illustrate the information that is written on the walls of the exhibit. One such sculpture that comes to mind is of too male dolphins engaging in homosexual relations by means of one of their blowholes.

Masturbation is another sexual activity that animals engage in with no reproductive value, they do this solely for the purpose of pleasure. The exhibit shows several pictures and videos in which animals are seen masturbating or using masturbatory aids to gain pleasure.

This exhibit also makes it a point to show that animals do engage in sex outside of procreation, and that there are many examples of sex with no reproductive value at all. One such example of this is same sex sexual relationships in the animal world. When people argue against homosexuals, they often say that there are no examples of homosexuality in the wild, when in reality there are. In fact, I learned from this exhibit that over 500 different animal species engage in homosexual sexual activity. From lions to the penguins is seems like all species seem to homosexuality present even though there is no reproductive value. Since it is present in wild, then how can it possibly go against nature? This exhibit raises this question and more, such as the complexity of sexual relationship between animals and what this could be used to say about human sexuality.

This exhibit will not be for everyone, for example, children should probably not go to see this because the sculptures are graphic and many of the terms may go over the child’s head. I think that teenagers should be able to see this exhibit because it is very informative and they can learn a lot about things that are not in high school biology class. I know I did!

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