This Horny Dolphin-Anaconda Throuple Has Left Scientists Puzzled
"I don't think that the snake had a very good time.”
Dolphins — sex pests of the sea — have once again lived up to expectation after a group wrangled an anaconda into their adult play date.
The Bolivian river dolphins have stumped experts after a photo from last August did the rounds of them frolicking around with a large snake in their mouths.
The research team behind the images wrote about it in a science journal last month, titled ‘A case of playful interaction between Bolivian River Dolphins with a Beni Anaconda’. So, case closed right? Negative.
The leading explanation is that they were simply getting down and dirty when the snake accidentally got tangled up with them. “We were able to observe on the photographs that the adult males were sexually aroused while engaging in object play with the anaconda,” the researchers wrote in their paper, saying the water mammals even went so far as to synchronised swim with the snake.
“Looking for a third”
— Victor From Germany (@NudeDelusion) May 4, 2022
While many jumped to the conclusion that it was gay dolphins having a good time, the researchers said it was probably just a display of hetero bravado instead.
“These authors also hypothesise that this object carrying was a sexual-social display, engaged by adult males, aimed for females,” they said, but because “there were juveniles on the scene as well [it] seemed that the adults were showing off the snake to them” as well.
“It could have been sexually stimulating for them,” said marine mammal scientist Diana Reiss to the New York Times. “It could have been something to rub on.”
Going on to explain the many other ways dolphins like to get off — including the time she saw a male bottlenose dolphin try to penetrate a whale blowhole — she said it’s possible that Bolivian river dolphins tried to stick it into the snake too.
“I don’t think that the snake had a very good time,” said biologist Dr Steffen Reich to the newspaper, explaining that while anacondas can temporarily hold their breath underwater, because the devilish duo were dunking it in-and-out of the water for at least seven minutes — the poor bugger probably died during the encounter.
Photo Credit: Omar M. Entiauspe Neto, Steffen Reichle, Alejandro dos Rios/via the New York Times