Bull and Male Donkey Form Unusual Sexual Bond
Researchers have documented a consistent, long-term sexual and social bond between a bull and a male donkey in Ethiopia. The study highlights that these animals chose each other despite having access to other potential partners of their own species.
Why it matters
The observation challenges traditional understandings of animal social behavior and species-specific mating patterns.
Sex between animals of the same sex is widespread in nature. But researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 2 now describe an unusual partnership involving an ongoing sexual relationship between a bull and male donkey living on an Ethiopian plateau. While the two males could have easily chosen partners of the same species and opposite sex, they continued to choose each other, even though they belonged to different owners and only saw one another during time in the pasture.
"The sexual interactions between Achille, the bull, and Patroclo, the male donkey, were not isolated events," says Elisabetta Palagi of the Universit di Pisa (UNIPI) in Toscana, Italy. "What really caught our attention was that these interactions were embedded in a very selective and consistent social relationship between the two individuals."
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