Why We Love (5 page)

African elephants are good examples. The female African elephant comes into an estrus (or heat) for about five consecutive days at any time during the year. If she conceives during this mating romp, her sexuality is suppressed during her twenty-two months of pregnancy and the following two years of nursing. Most do not mate again for about four years. So these females are particular about their mating partners. They
prefer
some; they refuse others. And female elephants have many admirers to choose from. Male African elephants leave their matriarchal natal group shortly after puberty (which occurs between ages ten and twelve) to wander with other males in small “all-bull” communities. But not until around age thirty does a male come into “musth,” or male heat.

Musth is a dramatic advertisement of sexuality. If you think women in tight short skirts, low-cut blouses, and high-heeled shoes are flaunting their erotic desire, you should see male elephants. As a male comes into musth, which generally lasts two to three months of every year, he begins to excrete a viscous fluid from bulging glands that lie midway between his eye and ear on either side. He dribbles urine continually. His penis sheath becomes thick with green-white scum. He exudes an odor so pungent that females can smell him before they see him. And as he approaches a female herd he starts his courtship strut, his “musth walk.” Head high, chin tucked in, ears tensely waving, trunk aloft, he emits a low rumble of confidence as he strides by.

Female elephants find all these drippings, this male perfume, and the “musth walk” exceedingly attractive. Those in estrus draw close like girls to rock stars. Such was Tia. During the many years that naturalist Cynthia Moss followed Tia’s matriarchal group of African elephants across the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, she saw many females choose their mates the way Tia did.

Tia showed no interest in any of the young males who began to crowd around her as her period of estrus became noticeable. Off she trotted as they pursued her across the grass. Because female elephants are about half the size of males, an experienced one can outrun or outmaneuver almost any male she wishes to avoid. Tia did just that. But when Tia saw Bad Bull, a dominant, older male in the height of musth, she changed her elephant mind.

Tia wanted Bad Bull the moment he swaggered into view—with ooze dripping from his cheeks, urine streaming down his legs, and foam spraying from his penis sheath. One whiff of this stud and the younger males moved off. Not Tia. Tia looked up at Bad Bull, holding her ears high in an estrous pose. Then she, too, began to move away. But unlike her conduct with her young male suitors, Tia looked over her shoulder as she departed, glancing repeatedly to see if Bad Bull was following. He was. Off Tia sped with Bad Bull in pursuit.

Now nature’s timeless dance would start. As Bad Bull caught up to Tia, his almost-four-foot penis emerged from its long gray sheath. Then delicately he placed his trunk along her back. She stopped; stood still; then backed toward him and braced herself, motionless, legs apart. He mounted energetically and, using his versatile penile muscles to direct his thrust, he sank his organ into her vulva. Together they stood for some forty-five seconds before Bad Bull dismounted. Withdrawing, he gushed his remaining semen onto the dirt. Tia turned to stand beside him. Repeatedly she emitted long low rumbles at him; then she rubbed her head along his shoulder.

Tia and Bad Bull were inseparable for the next three days, patting and stroking constantly between bouts of copulation. But when Tia’s estrus waned, Bad Bull departed to search for other fertile females. As Moss wrote in her marvelous book,
Elephant Memories,
“Personally, I cannot imagine why Tia wanted to mate with Bad Bull, but then she may have seen something in him that I did not.”
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Could it be love? A temporary crush? An infatuation? Tia and Bad Bull focussed their attention entirely on each other. Both displayed intense energy. Neither ate or slept as regularly as elephants do. And they touched and “talked” in low, soft, long, rumbling elephant conversation. Tia seemed to feel a genuine, if temporary, attraction to this proud, healthy, virile male.

The love lives of beavers are less visible. But these creatures also show signs of intense attraction as they court and mate. Take Skipper, for example. Skipper grew up on Lily Pond in Harriman State Park, New York, under the tutelage of his father, the “Inspector General,” and his mother, “Lily.”

Beavers live in small family groups. They work and romp at night. And kits stay with their parents for about two years before they waddle off some spring night to find mates and build homes of their own. Skipper did just that; he departed with his sister, Laurel, one moon-strewn April evening. Inbreeding is common among beavers, and that evening the two siblings moved to a nearby valley to construct a dam and grow a pond. Soon the water rose. Insects began to hatch, attracting frogs, waxwings, and king birds. Fish spawned, a dinner bell to hungry grebes. Willows, alders, and yellow iris spread along the banks. And Skipper and Laurel settled in. But alas, one night Laurel failed to return from her foraging among the maples, oaks, and conifers that nestled in the valley; she lay dead on a nearby road.

The following evening Skipper returned to Lily Pond. All summer he helped his parents fortify their dam, dredge channels, collect lilies, and frolic with their newest infants, Huckleberry and Buttercup. But as the leaves turned red and gold, Skipper once again departed and returned to his abandoned pond. Meticulously he rebuilt his dilapidated dam. Methodically he shoved mud onto the shore, then arranged it into pyramids, then sprayed these hillocks with scented oil from his anal glands and castoreum from his genital opening. These pungent advertisements, he hoped in beaver ways, would entice a “wife.”

Nature did her work. A few evenings later, naturalist Hope Ryden saw Skipper in the moonlight. He popped from the rising water—followed by a little brown female beaver. The two touched noses, then swam about together, gathering sticks to fill the dike. Like most beavers, Skipper and his tawny maiden had surreptitiously bonded in the dead of night, then settled into a lifelong partnership—months before she would come into estrus.

Were they “in love”? In
Lily Pond,
Ryden writes, “Beaver pairing is based on an attraction that is as mysterious as it is compelling, one that is unrelated to any immediate urge to copulate.”
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Ryden’s remark is important: among beavers, feelings of attraction and attachment were distinct from those of sex.

One April evening, however, the pair consummated their beaver marriage. Skipper and his little female emerged from their moonlit pond holding the same stick between their teeth. They tumbled over and over each other with such gusto that it looked to Ryden like foreplay. They dove and paddled and chattered together in dulcet, almost human tones. They were inseparable. And they must have mated under water—for in early August Skipper’s little companion produced two fat kits.

Like elephants, these beavers expended tremendous energy as they wooed. Like elephants, they focussed all of this courtship energy on a “special” other. Like elephants, Skipper and his tiny mate nuzzled affectionately and played flirtatiously in tender, dare I say “loving,” ways.

“Mad with Delight”

There are so many descriptions of attraction among animals that it is impossible to recount them all. I have read about the amorous lives of some hundred different species, and in every animal society, courting males and females display traits that are central components of human romantic love.

To begin with, they express wild energy. The American marten and his female chase each other madly, dodging, hopping, scampering, and swirling with what looks like glee. Weasels chase so vigorously that naturalists call it “play fighting.” The male dashes along the ground “making excited trilling calls” while his mate “may leap playfully around him.”
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In fact, the female keeps leaping around her partner long after they have finished copulating and he has sunk into a slumber. Mating civit cats vigorously chase each other. The male white-lined bat exuberantly shakes his wings at a female prior to coitus. The mating badger paws the ground as he purrs loudly. When an estrous female rat smells a courting male she hops and darts and hops some more, all the while flicking her ears and glancing over her shoulder in what can only be called a “come hither” gesture.

Big animals also become energized at mating time. As a female “common” chimpanzee comes into estrus, males begin to crowd around her. A courting male “displays” vigorously, rising to his hind legs with penis erect, swaggering before her on two feet, stamping the ground, rocking from side to side, shaking branches and staring at his intended. Male and female grizzly bears pace back and forth at a prescribed distance from one another in perfect synchrony, swinging their hulking bodies to and fro. Hyenas circle one another as they emit an excited crackling vocalization known as “laughing.” Mysticete whales rise from the sea and wave their pectoral fins or flukes so rapidly that it looks as if they vibrate. Bottlenose dolphins leap out of the water, then plunge and swim frantically in all directions, often upside down. But perhaps the most enchanting account of this rapturous energy comes from naturalist Malcolm Penny, describing the black rhino. The black rhino circles the estrous female, prancing back and forth on stiff legs, snorting, spraying urine, twirling his tail, shredding nearby bushes with his horn, tossing foliage in the air, and stepping in place—“looking,” as Penny put it, “for all the world as if he were dancing.”
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“Only a mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf,” it has been said.
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There is, however, much we can now say objectively about the wolf. One outstanding trait of this magnificent creature is that, like human beings, a male and female form a pair-bond to rear their young. And their courtship is intense. As George Rabb describes this, “The male starts dancing around the female, lowering his front quarters like a playful dog, and wagging his tail.”
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Even amphibians and fish dance energetically as they woo. Diurnal terrestrial male frogs do a “toe dance,” jumping up and down in front of the female to display themselves. And Darwin wrote that when a courting male stickleback fish sees a female he “darts round her in every direction … mad with delight.”
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Mad with delight: this is certainly true of men and women when they fall in love.

Nervousness

Animal suitors are also nervous and restless. If teenage boys are fidgety on dates, so are savannah baboons—as primatologist Barb Smuts has demonstrated. For years, Smuts followed these creatures along their daily routes in the grasslands of Kenya and she writes a touching description of the courtship between Thalia and Alexander.

It all began as Thalia, an adolescent, reached the height of estrus. For months she had avoided Alexander, another adolescent who had joined the baboon troop only a few months before. But on this early evening Thalia and Alexander sat about two meters apart on the cliffs where members of the troop often assembled to sleep. Observes Smuts:

“Alexander was facing west, his sharp muzzle pointing toward the setting sun, watching the rest of the troop make their way up the cliffs. Thalia was grooming herself in a perfunctory manner, her attention elsewhere. Every few seconds she glanced out of the corner of her eye at Alexander without turning her head. Her glances became longer and longer and her grooming more and more desultory until she was staring for long moments at Alexander’s profile. Then, as Alexander shifted and turned his head toward Thalia, she snapped her head down and peered intently at her own foot. Alexander looked at her, then away. Thalia stole another glance in his direction, but when he again glanced her way, she resumed her involvement with her foot.… This charade continued.… Then without looking at her, Alexander began slowly to edge toward Thalia.… Thalia froze, and for a second she looked into Alexander’s eyes. Then, as he began to approach her, she stood, presented her rear to him, and, looking back over her shoulder, darted nervous glances at him.”
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Thalia and Alexander were together still at dawn.

Many of Nature’s courters get edgy. Describing a pair of shorebirds, European avocets, Niko Tinbergen writes, “Both male and female stand and preen their feathers in a hasty, nervous fashion.
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Giraffes, among the world’s most graceful creatures, “walked about restlessly” when they courted.
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And naturalist George Schaller depicts the queen of the jungle, saying, “A lioness fully in heat is restless, changing her position often and sinuously rubbing herself against the male.”
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Loss of Appetite

Many animal suitors lose their appetites—yet another characteristic of human romantic love. When a sexually primed male elephant finds a female in peak estrus, for example, he dispenses almost entirely with food; he concentrates solely on copulating and guarding his prize from other males.
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In fact, a mating male elephant gradually becomes so thin and tired that he goes out of “musth.” He must rejoin his bachelor herd where he will recover—eating and resting for several months.

The courting male northern elephant seal loses almost half his body weight. As the three-month mating season approaches, males appear along the coast of California to claim sections of the beach. They fight viciously to stake their claims; indeed sometimes the shoreline waves are red with blood. Why so much fuss? Because females soon arrive to bear their pups and then return into estrus—briefly. The males who own the best pieces of real estate will have sexual access to the largest harems. So males are unwilling to leave their territory undefended for even an hour. Food, sleep: these essentials simply lose appeal.

Orangutans also lose their gourmand habits. These orange shambling relatives of ours live high in the jungle trees of Borneo and Sumatra, some sixty feet above the ground. When a male has grown the impressive cheek pouches that advertise his maturity, he begins to mark and defend a large territory full of fruiting trees. Several females set up smaller home ranges within his acreage. Each morning he wakes the neighborhood with a salad of grumbles followed by a bellowing roar to announce his whereabouts and sexual availability. Then when one of the females comes into estrus he begins to follow her tenaciously along her leafy trails. The female will only remain fertile for about five days. And if she conceives during this mating bout, she won’t return into estrus for more than seven years. So the male must stay near her constantly while she is in heat, as well as fight off rivals. To make matters worse, male orangs are twice the size of females; they move far more slowly and eat much more. Consequently a suitor has to skip meals to keep up with his agile little partner.