Animals

Scientists reveal sexual ‘secrets’ of elephants whose penises turn green in mating season


African bull elephants become more attractive with age – and scientists finally know why (Image: Getty)

Scientists have revealed why male members of an elephant species with penises which turn green during mating season become more attractive as they get older.

An international team led by Oxford University found that female African savanna elephants tend to prefer mating with bulls of a certain age, rather than younger animals.

The dirty old beasts go into a kind of frenzy when baby-making time comes around, expending much more energy on finding a mate than their incelephant younger competitors.

During mating season, bulls fall into ‘a periodic state of intensive testosterone-fueled sexual activity’ called ‘musth’.

Randy older males become more active than junior males during this period and often get more attention from women.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants and senior research associate at the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, said: ‘Older bulls are not only larger and more energetic in mating than younger bulls but female elephants tend to prefer them, perhaps because their size demonstrates their survival skills over many years and seasons.’

The investigation was led by Dr Lucy Taylor at the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, who used a combination of visual observations and GPS tracking data to analyse the sex lives of 25 male elephants aged between 20 and 52 years old.

Dr Taylor said: ‘Investigating how elephant reproductive tactics vary with age is crucial to our understanding of the behavioural ecology of the African savannah elephant and, ultimately, the driving forces shaping the evolution of their life history.

‘The fact that mature male elephants make such dramatic changes in their movement patterns when they are in musth also means that we can now use GPS tracking data alone to detect musth.’

Male elephants in the sunset of the lives are still a hit with the ladies (Picture: Getty)

Scientists previously reported that savannah elephants’ six-foot monster penises turn bright green when mating season comes around.

This phenomenon was first noticed by two female scientists, who mistook it for a venereal disease.

In her book Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family, conservationist and wildlife expert Cynthia J. Moss said she first noticed ‘green penis syndrome’ in a bull whose ‘sheath had turned a greenish-white color, and gave off a very sharp, pungent odor, which was not unpleasant, but very strong’.

She also observed that the colossal beasts strutted around proudly showing off their erection whilst ‘constantly dribbling urine, as if there were some malfunction of the sphincter’.

Whilst a mating display of green penis and leaking sphincter would be highly unattractive if performed by a human male, it proved to be quite enticing for female elephants.

Once confronted by one bull’s Day-Glo ding dong, a group of females became ‘wary and coy’ before one of them agreed to disappear off with him into a grove of trees.

At first, Moss feared the bull was about to pass on some dreaded lurgy, but after watching several elephants couple up and cop off, she realised there could be ‘some connection between green penis, or GP for short, and sexual activity’.





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