Love Me Tinder: Orangutans to Seek Love Via iPads

If you've ever tried online dating you now have something in common with a Dutch organutan besides 97% of your DNA. 

The Guardian's Jon Henley reports that Apenheul Primate Park in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands is showing Samboja, its 11 year-old female orangutan. photos of potential suitors from around the world. It’s partly a bid to get a better idea of how orangutans choose their mates but also, flying orangutans around from zoo to zoo for dates isn’t cheap and it seems they’re hoping if she likes the photo she’ll like the fellow. 

The bigger picture is that this orangu-tinder is part of a larger issue of understanding the emotional relationships. Pretty awesome since for a long time no one wanted to admit they might have any. 

The Washington Post's Amy B Wang reported that a zoo in Germany did a similar online dating experiment last year though the “date” didn’t result in any offspring.

They should have tried the human online dating formula: wine and carelessness.

Amazon Primal: Weird Ways Sperm Gets Delivered

"If humans had babies like marsupials do, tiny and kept in a pouch, I'd have had ten kids," I heard myself saying during a speech the other day. It's not really true - one gets carried away with a good audience. But alternative delivery methods are always a good thing to have.  Improving ways to get stuff where it needs to go is why the world loves Amazon and and hates air travel.

The human way of delivering sperm has been fine with us so far but the animal world has come up with some crazily inventive ways getting the little swimmers to the beach. Through the tops of their heads, via gift bundle (like this squid) and even literally falling apart to make this delivery. Now that's a work ethic.

And here's 5 Gross and Amazing Ways Animals Delivery Sperm on NatGeo. Hope those ladies tip. 

Welcome to Natural Seduction. Flirty. Dirty. Nerdy.

Ever since the Kama Sutra came out humans have thought they were sex geniuses . Spicy. Inventive. Kinky.

Meh.

Sure, we're pretty awesome, plus it depends on the humans in question ( when it comes to sex you often get out what you put in, so to speak) but when it comes to off-the-charts sexual creativity the non-human world is a bottomless grab bag of method, madness and mating, but one that works.

From sexual cannibalism to detachable penises to orgies on the beach, animals are pretty freaky. Still, even their oddest exploits can make us perspective on our own sex lives and cultural issues. Some of their sexual skills we'll never be able to do in a million years, some we do with surprising similarity.

Animals bridge us to our nature and connect us to a natural world we have left behind in so many ways and for which we are terribly homesick. Our hope with this blog is to facilitate conversation and possibly conservation but mostly have a lot of fun.

Besides, who doesn’t like to gossip about the other species?