Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #594

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Alpaca Sex Is Even Weirder Than You Think
By Ed Cara
Just in case you’d like to know: Alpaca sex is weird, biologi- cally speaking. In a recent paper, scientists have presented evi- dence that male alpacas impreg- nate their part- ners by thrusting
their penises all the way up inside the female’s uterus—a tactic not documented with any other mammal species to date.
The research was led by scien- tists from Mount Holyoke College in
Massachusetts. They also worked with a researcher from the North American Camelid Studies Program, part of the larger Nuñoa Project.
Camelids are a group of large, four-legged, even-toed mam-
mals that include camels, llamas and alpacas, while the project is named after a district in Peru with some of the highest densities of alpacas in the world. Alpacas are an important livestock to farm- ers in Peru and surrounding
countries, as well as a few other parts of the world. They’re primarily raised for their soft fleece, but can be used as meat, too.
Insemination for mammals typical- ly happens deep in the vagina, with the male’s sperm having to make its way through the cervix and then the uterus to reach the female’s egg in the oviducts (in humans, this location is better known as the fal- lopian tubes). The penis of some mammals, such as dogs and horses, can get very close to the cervix and basi- cally shoot sperm straight through into the uterus. Even in these animals, howev- er, the penis
seems to only penetrate the vagina.
But alpaca breeders have noticed that male alpacas thrust very far into their female partners during mating. Males are also known to have very long and thin penises that end with a hard cartilage tip, almost like a spear. And these two observations have led many people to con- clude that insemi- nation for these mammals must happen directly in the uterus. The authors of this new study, pub- lished last month in the journal PLOS-One, say that no clear evi- dence for this claim has been presented, though, until now.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine