Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Ancient Origins Of Sex

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Going back hundreds of thousands of years, bumping uglies had to start somewhere.What was the first sexual position? Was sex even for pleasure at this stage of evolution?On today's episode we're going right the way back to the beginning, and talking to Professor John Long, the palaeontologist and author who discovered the fossils which showed us that copulation was invented by ancient armoured fishes - a lot earlier than scientists previously thought.Get on your scuba gear, Betwixters, we're going back millions of years to the murky origins of sex.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts.Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here with the latest instalment of betwixta sheets. But before we can continue, you know what's coming? You know what has to happen just to make sure that you're safe and I'm safe and everybody's safe. And most importantly, the lawyers are safe. Here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adultery way covering a range of adult subjects.

And you should be an adult too. And now that we've got that little lot out the way, if you happen to listen and you do get offended, well, tafts because fair doze, we did tell you. But Twixters, adjust your snorkels, we're underwater for this one. We are in a cold, dark lake in prehistoric Scotland. No, we're not on the hunt for the lock nest monster, we're on the hunt for something even stranger than that. This might not seem like the sexiest of historical settings, but we are about to witness something monumental in sex history. Oh, we are. We are watching what scientists believe to be the

first act of sex between two bony fish called microbracius dick eye. That's true. I didn't make that up. I promise the first fish to have sex was Scottish and they were called dick eye. But if you can get past that and stop kiggling, this is serious science. Right, when did the micro-bracchus dick-eye live? Well, it was 385 million years ago. Yes, betwixters. To kick off the new year, we are going right back to the very start of sex. We're going to ask the questions, how was sex invented? What did these fish think that they were doing at the time? And when did humans start having sex for pleasure? And is it even possible to define what sex actually is? Huh. But some Ed Scratchers be there. I am ready to do this if you are.

What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister.

There are lots and lots of disputed facts all throughout history, but one thing is for certain, as long as there have been humans, there's been shagging. That's indisputable. But where did it all start? Apparently, the first act of sex did not look sensual, like a Mills and Boone novel. Scientists reckon that it looked like two weird Scottish ancient fish

interlinking arms, or rather fins, and doing a kind of a square dance. Sound sexy? Yeah, yeah, I thought so too. This year, on Betwixt, we are exploring sex in different time periods with multiple episodes every month, from the masturbating Middle Ages

to the horny Hanoverians. And this month, we are going right back to the very start, Betwixt the prehistoric and ancient bedsheets. And today I am speaking to Professor John Long about the invention of sex. He actually discovered the fossils, the fish fossils, that show us that copulation was invented by ancient armored fish a lot earlier than scientists had previously thought. I had so much fun talking about this one. I hope that you enjoy it too. Oh, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Professor John Long. How are you doing?

I'm doing well, thanks, Kate. Do you know why I'm so happy to have you here is not only is your work amazing, but of all the guests, we've had on this podcast, talk about the history of sex. I think you have got to be the person who can speak to the oldest types of sex that anyone or anything has ever had. We've done Victorians and we've done Vikings and we've done medieval and we've done Edwardian. You, prehistoric, that is a hell of a field. How did you get into prehistoric sex?

Well, it was purely serendipitous because I've studied these ancient devonian fish. that's like fish 400 million years old for many years. And then one day we stumbled across a specimen. I had this strange, bony sort of shaped protrusion coming out the back of it. And adorned on me that this was an early sex organ. You know, unless you've done down and dirty in the Devonian, you just haven't lived. And so we discovered how these ancient fish were the very first creatures on earth

to actually copulate. You found a fish boner. We did. And it's made of solid. own too. How old is this? How old is the fossil that you discovered this on? Well, they come from Scotland and basically about 390 million years old. At a time when there was virtually no life of animals on land, just just plants and insects. And the most advanced life on the planet were the fishes in the seas. And these ancient armored fishes, which are now extinct called

placoderms, really ruled the roost. They were the dominant, most abundant creatures on earth at the time. When you said they ruled the world, because in my head when you said fish, for some reason I've gone like goldfish. Like what are we talking here? What kind of size? Like how big are these things? Apart from the bono, which we'll get to. Because you said they're armoured. Like what is an armoured fish? Actually, just like a shark with a set of bony plates covering the head and the front part of the body, like a suit of interlocking armour. Wow. They were the first creatures to have jaws, the first creatures to have paired hind limbs, which is equivalent to our legs. or pelvic fins. And amongst other things, they had very advanced features in their brains and their skeletons that actually linked them to the beginning of the origin of the line leading right up to humans.

No way. Oh, my God. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So we're not talking about goldfish, oh, not at all. Oh, no. Wow.

Some of these were huge. I mean, Duncolostias was a giant maybe up to six or seven meters long, although some recent researchers want to scale it down to four meters. but any way you look at it, it was one mean hell of a Darth Vader of a fish with this armoured helmet covering its head. That is one hell of a fuck-off fish. Right, okay, so that's the first myth that you've just posted. It's more like sharks with armour on. Yeah.

So where was this fossil discovered and when did you get your hands on it? And was there at a ha moment where you just went, oh my God, that's a penis? Like, how did that? There was. There was indeed, Kate. Actually, it all started really in Tallinn and Estonia. And I was there working with this old Estonian lady had a wonderful collection of fossil fish from all around Russia

because, you know, when Russia controlled Tallinn. And I found this one bone, which was a little bent bone. And it dawned on me that that might be a reproductive organ, but the penny didn't drop. The whole story didn't make sense until we looked at Scotland and then went through the collections from various museums and private collections. And we found these tiny little fish

that are like bony-plated fish with tiny little bony arseys. coming off the sides had these fully gigantic bony hooked sexual organs or the origins of, well, you can't call it a penis because it's not soft, but it's called a claspur in sort of fishy terms because it was a bony structure. And if you straightened out these hooked bony structures, there would have been a third the length of the entire animal. So like having a penis, you know, two foot long if you're a large human kind of thing. No wonder they went extinct. You couldn't be dragging that thing around with you. Yeah. So Scotland, let me tell you where in Scotland we found these. They were actually from the Orkney Islands up north of Scotland. I had three trips up there and just love working up there. It's one of my favourite places. You know, you've got to love the whiskey from up there and the fabulous fish and chips. But they're called Microbrakius is the name of the fish, which means little arms. But you'll never believe this. It's a miracle. But the species was named over 100 years ago and the species is microbracius dick eye.

No, it's not. It is. It actually is. You couldn't make it up because it was named after Robert Dick, who was a fossil collector of Scotland of those days, you know. So here I am discovering the oldest fossil fish with giant bony, you know, penis-like organs, and it's called microbrecchio's dick eye. But it was incredible. It made world news at the time. It was even on Stephen Fry's QI at the time. Well, that would be right up there, wouldn't it?

That doesn't, yeah, that would be world news. So can I ask, like, what was it about this particular bone that made you go, that's a penis, it's not an extra limb, it's not a leg, it's, this is a reproductive bone? Well, Kate, when you said, how do we know it wasn't a limb, you've hit the nail on the head there because what we discovered was far bigger than just the oldest sexual organs of any vertebrate. The first time our deep ancestors back 400 million years ago began to copulate and have what we call internal fertilization where the female invests all energy in every. a few live young, you know. What we also discovered later when we did a big review of all these

ancient armored fishes, we're looking at the pelvic area, looking for other sexual organs, and we found quite a few of them in other species after that. It sort of started this big research direction, if you like. And then we realized that these claspers were not connected to the pelvic fin as they are in sharks. So in all sharks alive today, which copulate, they have these claspers coming off the pared hind fins called the pelvic. fins that they insert in the female. Ours were not connected to that fin, so they were basically developed biologically like a separate set of limbs.

And we actually published this in 2015 saying that the very first sexual organs were developed as what we call a homologue to a set of limbs. They developed like arms and legs. So like placoderms didn't just like to get a leg over. They like to get a leg in. Does you find any evidence of the female of the species who I'm slightly worried about now after you've described the length of this penis, were they all right? Yes, well, we actually discovered not just the origin of the male sex organ,

we also discovered the first evidence of female sexual organs in our ancient vertebrate lineage or first backboneed animals with jaws. And because normally there's just nothing in that area, there's a cloacal opening where the female can receive the male sperm through one of these sexual organs. But in this little fish called microbracias, we discovered the females had these extra pair of small bony plates that were kind of roughened up like cheese graters. And the whole idea was to hold the male organ in position so they could receive those packages of sperm. We presume they were packages. We don't really know, but sharks deposit packages of

sperm and they're the most closely related group. So, yeah, we discovered the first evidence of male and female sexual dimorphism where you can actually look at a species and say, that's a male and that's a female. Wow. Now, one of my favorite anthropological things, fact, and you might be about to disabuse me of this, is that there's a lot of, they're called like cervical plugs in animals, which is where the semen coagulates once it's inside the vagina as a way to prevent other sperm from gaining entry. Is the cheese grater vagina in these, this is such a weird sentence. Is the cheese greater vagina in these giant armoured sharks, is that like that, that it was like to stop competing sperm?

Were they quite slutty these sharks? Well, we don't actually know because we can't observe these things in the living form, but what we can say is it didn't block the cloacal opening. So it was more likely an accessory sex organ, like a bit of kinky clothing that might have helped attract the male to them. The other thing we've figured out is these males had these big, hooked, bony sexual organs. On the inside face, there's a groove, obviously, to pass sperm. but on the outside face that faced the world, you know, the ventral belly part of the fish,

they had these spikes coming out, like they were really quite kinky. And we thought, what's the meaning of the spikes? And we came up with two ideas. One was that they might have been like the peacock's tail to attract the females. Like, look at my big spiky knobs, you know. Or they could have been to anchor the male onto the substrate, like the bottom of the lake, while they were doing the deed. In other words, to get purchase.

So now I'm going to tell you what the oldest sexual position was in the world because we discovered it by accident with these fish. So unlike the giant predatory forms, I mentioned, these ones, Microbrakeus, were actually quite small, only about three or four inches in length. So tiny little fish. But one of the things that is characteristic about them is they're called microbracius,

because they have what looks like tiny little arms coming off the side of this armored sort of fish-like body. And these little arms have little hooks on the inside. and nobody knew for over 100 years what these arms were for. They thought they were just for maybe walking on land or something strange like that. And then we figured it out. If you're like a box-shaped fish and you've got these massive great knobs that sort of curve off the back of your body,

how are you going to insert them into a female? In water. You know, they'd keep pushing them away, wouldn't they? Yes, yes. So instead, the females and the males could hook their little arms around with the interlocking hooks like a square dance. So I call this the do-se-do mating position. And they must have gone side by side, hook their arms,

and then the male could actually pull the big claspor organ and inserted into the cloaca, the female, and deposit his sperm. And that must be the older sexual position of any animal. John, is there any chance at all that the T-Rex's tiny arms did something similar? Or is that just nonsense? I think it's nonsense, Kate, because they're too small to even reach around the female, let alone hook each other up. But who knows?

We don't know the behaviour of T-R-X. I might have pointed their fingers at each other as a sexual arousal or something. Animals are so strange and bizarre that they could have used it for any sort of thing like that. But back to the fish. So is there anything older than this? Like could there be anything older?

Are you kind of like on tent of hooks that there could be something unearthed in Scotland again that's like, oh God, this is even older? Or is this as old as it's going to get? Well, there was in the same deposits from the Orkneys, they found embryos inside another fish called Watson Osseus, which is slightly bigger, almost three quarters of a metre long. And since the first discovery, the very first discovery that set all this off was from a fossil site in the far north of Western Australia. I've been working for almost 40 years now. It was a fish with an embryo inside it.

And at the time, we didn't have really the male sexual organs really well defined. And so, but it did say, definitely, they were having copulation and the females were raising young inside them. But this was an amazing discovery, Kate, because I had the umbilical cord inside the mother still connected to the embryonic skeleton. So we knew it was definitely a baby and not like a last meal. This was published in 2008 in Nature and I named it after David Attenborough. So we called it Marta Paisus, meaning motherfish Attenborough eye. And when I caught up with Sir David on his visit to Australia a few years ago, he was so delighted. But he said, John, they'll always remember me for now being linked to the origins of sex.

My God, that's incredible. So this is the earliest evidence that we have of what we might call penetrative sex or internal sex. You called it there. Before then, I don't know, like hand jobs or like what was going on. But it was probably like what kind of reproduction was happening before then? Well, just spawning in water, the same old boring way that trout do it. say, come on honey, put your eggs down there. I'm going to like put sperm all over them. But you can't do a hand job if you're a fish because you've only got fins. But we actually

discovered in 2020 the oldest fossil hand in a fish that had bone bony fingers in it, a fish that was breathing air and about to invade land. It was almost like a land animal, like a small amphibian. And so fish actually developed fingers before they developed left the water and invaded land. So maybe they could have done some sort of primitive hand. job, who knows. My God, that's incredible. So I teach students in the history of sexuality, not prehistoric sexuality. This is fascinating.

But one of the questions that I always put to them is, what is sex? And then immediately everyone thinks that they've got an answer. And they go, oh, oh, it's this, and then pretty soon it all starts to fall apart because you can't say it's just for reproduction because it's not. And you can't say it's just putting a penis into something because it's not. But from your research, how would you answer that question? What is sex? Well, from a biological point of view, it's being able to reproduce where you share the genetic material from two partners. I mean, you can asexually reproduce, like by cloning if you're a jellyfish or a hydro or something like that.

But once you start sharing your genetic material with a partner and coming up with variability in your offspring, that's sexual reproduction. And that started probably about two billion years ago with the very first cells that had a nucleus called eukaryotes. We actually have evidence at a fossil site in Australia that's about nearly 600 million years old called Ediacra, which has the earliest sort of diverse animal fauna in the world of primitive sort of animals that lived at the bottom of the sea, that some creatures spawned like corals and all had offspring the same size on the same layers like corals sporting under the full moon. And so there was the first evidence of sexual frenzies or orgies going on nearly 600 million years ago. I'll be back with John after this short break. What about sexual pleasure?

Because it's a subject of endless fascination and interest to me. I'm not a believer in a great creator, many people are. But if there was, at some point, this person went, I think they should enjoy this. I think they should really, really enjoy sex. That would help them do it more. But from like your point of view as a paleontologist and someone studies this stuff, what is the advantage of sex for pleasure? And it's very difficult to say. But when did we start doing that?

When did it become fun? Well, that's a good question, Kate. I don't think there's evidence in the fossil record apart from saying that there were courtship rituals, that there must have been some sort of mating or territorial battles going on. I mean, with these ancient armored fish, there's evidence of territorial battles. If we look at the closest relatives of these placoderms like sharks, and I've been studying sharks a lot lately. I've just written a new book on them that's coming out next year, but I can mention that later. But the thing about sharks is the males will bite the females on the pectoral fin to get purchased to put the claspor in and mate.

So you do require some sort of ritual, which is like courtship or maybe even biological love in the primitive sense, in order for a female to let the male have access to her. And that's part of evolution, because it means the males think they're going to get control of, you know, the offspring or whatever, and my gene pool will be passed on everywhere. But it's really the females that can control, in many cases, the quality of the mate that they want to choose. And that can be either through mating battles between the males,

or it can be through what's called the sneaky fucker hypothesis. John Maynard Smith invented that, where the big alpha males might be battling it out to, I'm the biggest, toughest male, and I'm going to take the harem of females. And while they're battling, the little intelligent male is at the back, sort of getting one in quick with the females, passing the intelligent genes along, not the brawn genes.

And so the evolution works in lots of amazing ways so that there's a good, diverse gene pool in the next generation. Otherwise, we'd all be sort of inbred and narrow and go extinct, you know. So that's a very important aspect of sex and why. works in nature. I never thought, like when you look at evidence of these maintenance of these maintenance of these maintenance across the animal kingdom is there must be pleasure involved because like it sounds like, well, why else would you do it? Why would you let a male shark bite you unless like it actually felt? I mean, she might be faking it. She wouldn't be the first woman to have

done that. But like there must be something. They have to enjoy it and they wouldn't do it. I agree. And you know, and humans are just animals. So the extension of that evolutionary process. So if we work backwards, then all sex must involve some sort of pleasure or no creatures would do it, would they? Right. But sex itself is a strange thing because it's not always done for pleasure. I can't remember the name of the scientist. I can only ever remember her first name, which is Cindy, because that stuck with me.

But she did a piece of research to try and understand the reasons human beings have sex. And she came up with over 200 different reasons, ranging from, it feels really good and I'm really, really horny, through to I'd quite like a promotion. or I'm bored or my favourite as an icebreaker. There's so many different reasons as to why we engage in this behaviour. Yeah, it's like homosexuality. There's a wonderful book by Aldo Poyani, a professor at Monash, about animal homosexuality,

where there's over 1,500 species that have homosexual behaviour. And yet people say, well, why that wouldn't benefit the next offspring, but it's all got to do with kin relationships and protecting the bigger group with strong relationships. So, you know, there's lots of different reasons, obviously, as you mentioned, that creatures have sex. But as you get more up the animal evolutionary tree, you get more complex and more, I suppose, diverse reasons for having sex, like trading sex for food and so on, like bonobos. I did read a paper about that. My producers just messaged to the name of the scientist was Cindy Meston, so we'll give her a proper shout out.

But I did read that I think it was an economist, Keith Chen, who wrote a paper on what I'm a person. happened when they taught bonobo monkeys the value of money. Like they gave them chips to try and chade them with jelly blocks. And he said that almost immediately the women started trading sex for the money. Yeah, because it's a patriarchal society. The women rule that community and so they can do what they like. It doesn't happen in normal chimpanzees. So yeah, there's all sorts of really complex sexual relationships. I wrote a book, you're going to love this. Years ago, it's called Hung Like an Argentine duck, but the American version is called Dawn of the Deed. And I look at animal sexuality, right, the evolution of animal sexuality, both through time and in different animal groups.

You know, it is really bizarre. I mean, you mentioned before vaginal plugs. And sperm competition is one of the biggest things in evolution, is that ability for the female to choose the quality of the sperm, the best mate, and then even save it inside her until she's ready to sort of give birth. That's one of the biggest revolutions in the evolution of sex through time is having that ability to do that in many species. Do human beings do that? Because I've heard that suggested that there is a cervical plug, that the human vagina is prepared for competing sperm. There has been some papers published. In fact, I refer to one or two of them in my book about that, saying that they do think there's sort of some sort of evidence that some females can do that, but it's not widely sort of accepted.

it's sort of one of those theories on the edge kind of thing. I'm not an expert in human sexuality. I must admit, I've just cited a few papers that I read. We do know Neanderthals had spiky penises. I didn't know that. You know how we know that? Because of genetics, because of ancient DNA. They've got a particular gene that is known in primates

that have a particularly kind of spiky type of penis. So there's all sorts of things you can infer from the past. I mean, we've got fossil dinosaurs with the anus preserve, for example. The cloaca actually perfectly preserved. but we haven't got evidence of them using it for anything. We've got fossil turtles that died actually mating in the mating position in flagrante. John, you've had many moments in your illustrious career, but one of them I really want to know about is when you met the queen.

Yes, yes. Well, that was all connected to the motherfish, that fish I named after David Attenborough, because at the time, that was 2008, the paper came out in nature, and the Royal Institution of Britain was looking, for a platform to have a big event. And the royal family were there, David Attenborough was there,

Susan Baroness Greenfield was there, Baroness Susan Greenfield, I should say. So they invited, they picked my paper on the origins of sex to be a focal point for a satellite link up between Australia and the UK. And on that illustrious night, the Queen was there, and David Attenborough were all talking over the satellite link. And actually, the Queen didn't ask any questions about it, but Prince Philip asked a question about the fish with the first. reproductive organs and said, well, what did it look like? And I said, oh, just a little fish with

bony plates and says, okay, walked away. I loved the fact that you explained the origins of sex to our royal family. I just think that's absolutely outstanding. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall there. Well, they were just listening. I don't know how much they took in, but at least Prince Philip was interested enough to ask a question. So this work on the giant armored fish, they are the oldest evidence of what you've called internal sex. Did anything change in evolution from that point on that? I know that we don't have, well, some animals have massive penises and some of them have spiked penises, but was there any variation on sex after that or did what we evolve from? Did we just find internal sex and we ran with it? That's a great question

because people have often asked me, so how do we know the link between these ancient placoders? and so right through us mammals with a single penis. And the question was solved back in 2004 by geneticists, looking at the kind of genes that give rise to limbs and genital organs. And it was Marty Cohn from Florida, wrote a paper that showed it was Hox D-13. That's a particular gene. That's a blueprint gene for building a pattern in a body. It's called a hox gene that actually develops limbs and eugenital organs, male and female,

all at the same time. They light up with the same marker. And so at the time, nobody knew what the meaning of it was. And then our paper says, well, we've just seen that limbs and sexual organs developed as the same genetic sort of process. And so that sort of was almost proof that they all developed together. But then you've got to think about, well, these placodomes had two claspers coming off the body and sharks, males have two clasper. So when did we get just one penis? And the answer is it goes from like paired sexual organs in fish to amphibians. Early, like legless amphibians, of course, Sicilians have spiky-paired hemipines. Snakes have paired penises, hemipenes.

But then you get to the more advanced reptiles, like the archosaurs, which include dinosaurs and turtles and crocodiles, and they have one singular penis. Because instead of making two and always worrying what they're going to do with the other one, why don't just focus on one and do it well? you know, from that changed evolution from that point, and mammals evolved from reptiles, so they inherited the singular penis.

And so that's a turning point for that little thing. But I must tell you a funny story, because when the story broke about the microbracus with the two claspers sticking out the side, I got interviewed by all the world's media, and they asked lots of really erudite and interesting questions. But one German journalist asked me, he said,

saw, they have two claspers, one on each side. Could the male do two females? at once. And I said, well, it's possible, but we don't know until we find a fossil with one on each side. So that was kind of an interesting question to ask, I thought, at the time. Oh my God, that's incredible. So you have written the book Hung Like an Argentinian Dock about animal mating rituals. And I find this fascinating because the stuff that goes on in the animal kingdom, like it just blows my mind. But when you were researching that book, do you have

examples, the ones that really made you go, I'm sorry, what? That's just so bizarre. Well, the echidna in Australia has a five-headed penis. Boom, there we go. I mean, that's bizarre. Don't ask me how they do it, but they do it, and it works for them. They're some of the oldest mammals on

the planet, you know, they go back 100 million years or so. The Eguti and some of the rodents have what I call the Swiss Army knife style of penis, where They have all sorts of adaptions on the penis so they can pull the plug out of sperm of the previous male and deposit their own sperm. It's like, you know, we need this, this duva to pull this plug out and this duver to put the sperm back in and this one for like caressing the female or whatever. So there's an amazing variety of sexual organs of animals. And each one obviously works because that species wouldn't be successful if it didn't.

Why did you call it hung like an Argentinian duck? What have Argentinian ducks got? A 42 centimetre long penis on a duck about this penis. And it coils under the water. It's the largest penis of any backboneed animal relative to body weight size. Any way that they could be descendant from the sharks,

from the armoured sharks, because they had massive penises. Is that the same sort of evolutionary? What is the evolutionary advantage of having a massive? Large penises have come and gone, literally, throughout evolution many times. No, it's like birds don't have penises now. Most birds don't. So the only birds that do are the primitive ones at the base of the evolutionary tree.

And these include the ducks and chickens, roosters, and some of the more basal flightless birds, remus and things like that. But most of the flying birds have had to cut back on all sorts of extraneous things to save on weight. So flying birds like your blackbird or your crow, they tend to dismate with cloacal to cloacal contact, where they will touch bottom. together and the male deposit his sperm and be off. And in some birds, like little dunnarts, that can be done in like a fraction of a second.

It's like the quickest quickie ever on the planet by some of these birds, you know. But it works for them. It's like a drive-by mating instead of shooting. That's crazy. It is. It is. It's crazy, isn't it? And the most bizarre ones are in the non-vertebrate animals, the invertebrates like bedbugs.

They have traumatic sexual penetration by the male that kind of tears the female almost. apart to deposit the sperm, but somehow they live and reproduce. And of course, we all know about praying mantises and redback spiders where the females eat the head off the male in order to excite the male into sexual release. So there's loads of stories like that. We can go on and on and on. Yeah. One of the things I'm so fascinated about human sexual behavior is that we don't have a mating season. Like a lot of animals have mating seasons. I think that it would actually be quite a good idea if we did have that and we could all get it out the way in like a couple of months, you know, which is like, right, this is the period now.

Yeah, yeah. Why don't we have a mating season? Would that be an advantage to us? Well, maybe back in the early days of when we're cave people and, you know, living it hard off the land, the mating season was related to when there's an abundance of food so that females have the best chance of bringing a baby to full term. So like most animals, a mating season does relate to availability of resources. so this is the best time to be young because there's more food around.

Obviously, with modern technology and globalisation, we can make whenever we like. John, you've just, you've absolutely blown my mind today. I've just learned that sex started with kinky, well-endowed sharks in Scotland that were wearing armour. That's just my poor brain can't cope with this. But as a final question, why is it important that we know about these fish with penises that were doing stuff a long, long time ago? What's the relevance and the significance of that to us today?

Why is that important that we know? Well, you're a historian and, you know, the importance of history, knowing our pedigree and where we've come from and our cultural evolution is very important. I think knowing our evolutionary history is important because it connects each one of us with the rest of the nature, with all other species. And knowing how closely related are to things like sharks and early bony fishes means that, you know, they're not too different from us after all. and it makes us feel like we're part of this continuum of nature,

that we've evolved for a reason and we've evolved characters and features due to all the different evolutionary challenges we've had in the past. So I think it's just wonderful to know our place in nature as a species. John, you have been unbelievably fabulous to talk to today. And if people want to know more about you and your research, and quite frankly, they should, where can they find you? Well, the Flinders University website or the conversation, which is I've got 42 articles on the conversation and a profile there.

And my books, I've got a new book coming out next year on the history of sharks, the secret history of sharks. So that'll be everywhere in mid-20204 and maybe we can talk about that next year. Oh, my God. Yes, please. Oh, John, thank you so much. You have been a treat. My pleasure, Kate. It's been lovely to meet you and to talk.

It's been a lot of fun, I must say. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to John for joining me. And if you like what you heard, you know the drill. don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hi,

you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on ancient Roman sex coming up and in February we'll be exploring the sex lives of medieval people. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Seeds, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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