July 2004 Archives

The Promiscuous Octupi

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Promiscuous: Having casual sexual relations frequently with different partners; indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners.

It seems pretty absurd to be giving labels of sexual promiscuity to animals, especially invertibrae...but a nature show last night didn't agree. They claimed that octupi are promiscuous (but don't have casual sex...which is technically part of the definition of promiscuous!). The narrator would have been accurate to say that Octupi are not monogamous. Regardless, at what level of intelligence should animals be called promiscuous? In fact, most animals are pretty choosy, or at least go through a 'dating ritual' so maybe its all a mute point.