One of the rights of passage to becoming an adult is learning about “the birds and the bees” which today is an almost completely nonsensical euphemism. I’m an adult now and have no idea how this became a saying because quite frankly birds and bees are terrible examples for human reproduction. In fact I don’t even see the correlation. Both lay eggs and using a bee as a metaphor for, ahem, “pollination” seems a really big stretch to me. So I looked it up. We’ve been saying this since at least 1825 and no one has any idea why, though some theorize it might be even stranger, linked to some myth about babies being conceived through bee stings?! I guess we know what that pervy little stork’s been up to!

Clearly asking humans about this whole messy subject was the wrong approach to take so I took my need for answers directly to the source and this is what I’ve found:

Bees:

In some ways bees are a lot like us. They live in communities, love to dance, have an intense sweet tooth, and on cold winter days a bee is never happier than when it’s cuddled up. But in other ways they couldn’t be more alien, especially when it comes to their sex lives. You see bees live in a matriarchal society that forms around a central queen – the only bee woman enough to have fuck buddies. All her daughters surround her and do all the work in the hive but they’re never allowed to have any sweet summer flings. It’s a hard working, short-lived, chaste existence, that’d make any Puritan proud. Male bees are called drones and they literally do nothing their entire lives except eat, annoy the workers, and then on one glorious day they’ll outstay their welcome and get kicked out, at which point there’s only one thing left to do, gather up the other frat bro bees and find a queen to gang bang. This is done high in the air, one drone after another plummeting to their death after the moment of coitus. Oh, did I forget to mention they give the ultimate sacrifice for this ritual? You see the queen gets to keep all their little bee bits as they detach and the now gutted drone tumbles to the ground still half alive where he’ll die cold and alone after he slams into the dirt below. Harsh.

Lessons learned from the secretly kinky life of bees:

• Only one woman per community should ever be able to breed
• All remaining women should be encouraged to take their frustration out with tons and tons of work. And perhaps a lack of sleep. [Bees only sleep thirty minutes to an hour and a half each day!]
• Men should be expected to do nothing of any importance – except be at the beck and call of the queen.
• Pair bonds should never be encouraged. It’s too traumatic knowing you killed your boyfriend by ripping off their dick in mid flight.
• Men should be gutted and die after losing their V card.

No, that really doesn’t translate well to humanity…. maybe the birds can do better. I mean birds are a little more similar to us. At least they got warm blood and comprehensive brains. So birds, tell us, what do you have to say about reproduction!

Birds:

For centuries we have looked upon birds as our role models for monogamous love because many birds pair bond. Doves, which are favored as religious examples by Christianity, are of particular interest because of their sweet, loving, kind, gentle, monogamous ways. Here a male female couple will find each other, start a nest, raise offspring, and everything is absolutely perfect behind the white picket fence…. Too bad it’s a completely warped perspective!

For one doves are psychotically violent. Biologists like to tell me “territorial” is the word but I think psychotically violent is a little more honest. You see they don’t just pair bond, they become little feathered Bonnie and Clyde couples, ripping out the feathers of any intruders and killing them whenever they can!

And what about all those other birds we’ve thought were monogamous like finches and parrots? Well! That’s also a bit of a show. Recent behavioral studies have shown that although they do raise their kiddoes by following the usual nuclear family dynamic this in no way means they’re sexually monogamous. In fact while dad is out finding worms mom is usually taking little breaks from sitting on the eggs to entertain the neighbors. It’s not just her. While dad is finding worms he’s also making rounds to his neighbors and well…. there’s a lot of lovin’ goin’ ’round.

Ah yes, but at least they’re all heterosexual! Right? No…. not really… You see we thought all those cute little couples were male female pairs because we just assumed it to be so. However you may remember a series of penguin couples who were very clearly gay. In fact in the United States people were devastated when our most famous gay penguin couple Silo and Roy broke up after six years together. Silo wandered off to start a family with his new bride, a homewrecker by the name of Scrappy, and Roy… well he was left to “sit alone, staring at the wall.” We’re sorry Roy. Love hurts. This all proves two things: first gay and bisexual birds are completely real. Secondly birds are familiar with the idea of divorce. In fact it’s been seen hundreds of times in sea bird colonies where pairs tend to be…. monogomish, pairing off for a few years before losing their perspective mates in a storm and accidentally falling into the feathered laps of someone else. Chicken hens are the best at this, choosing one rooster to sire an entire clutch of eggs before having a 50% chance of choosing someone else for the next clutch!

But back to the penguins. They’ve always been super popular with the public visiting them at zoos, they were historically far less popular with Old School biologists who found them “lascivious, wanton little creatures.” In modern English they were calling our adorable tuxedoed friends whores. They weren’t wrong. Penguins have always had a soft spot in my heart for their entrepreneurial spirit. They are the first animals besides humans where prostitution was observed. It was a question of necessity. Female penguins, when they do not have enough pebbles to build a nest, will wander around shaking their booty until they find someone willing to give them a rock for a quickie. Who are we to judge?

Besides penguins are actually very tender and loving parents. They keep their eggs perched on their feet so they won’t freeze in the snow and when they hatch they take care of their one offspring very well. Less can be said of rhea birds. Female rhea birds lay eggs in a nest protected by the male rhea bird. The only caveat is the eggs were not fertilized by him but rather her last lover and when she’s done with the current confused baby daddy she then runs off to breed with the next. Worse than rabbits rheas are! But at least they have one parent taking care of the kids which is more than can be said of European Common Cuckoos who are one of a number of parasitic species who lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving their delinquent offspring to hatch, push out all the host parents’ legitimate offspring, and eat until they practically blow up. Ah nature! She’s amazing, isn’t she?

But not all birds are bad. I can think of at least one goose who should be given an award. His name was Thomas and for nearly thirty years he formed a pair bond with a male swan name Henry. And when Henry decided he wanted a wife of the same species? Thomas was not deterred. He stayed in a multi-species thruple, helping raise 63 baby swans. This lasted until Henry’s death, at which point Henrietta the female swan said, “This is getting too weird for me” and flew off leaving Thomas alone, old, and blind. He lived to be 38 years old and continued to help raise orphaned swans until his dying day proving this goose was a better person than most people.

Lessons learned from the salacious lives of birds:

• The image of monogamy is far more important that the practice of it.
• Ultra violence is best suited for the truly monogamous.
• Homosexuality and bisexuality are totally cool.
• So’s polyamory.
• So’s prostitution for the building of better homes.
• So’s inter-species love affairs within reason.
• Raising a family can be nice but if kids aren’t for you consider shipping them off to the neighbors without warning or blaming them on a maybe-father and letting him deal with their mess!
• “If all else fails just hide the eggs and pretend it never happened” – Chicken Proverb

So yeah! I think we learned a lot today! About human reproduction. Maybe we should update this phrase. Maybe we should learn from an animal closer to us. How about apes? Bonobos are our closest animal relatives – they fuck anyone and everyone to diffuse stress just about every twenty minutes or so. They also make sure to include the kids in every gang bang, why not? Family fun! OK, Bonobos clearly aren’t any good either…. chimps? Adolescent male chimps form gangs and run around biting the testicles off rival gang members… nope…. that’s not helpful…. gorillas? Male gorillas keep harems and have insanely tiny balls…. You know, I’m going to have to get back to you on this….