Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation (C4): IF you stumbled across this late night series these past three nights after a trip to the pub, you probably thought you were very drunk indeed.
You'd have been confronted by a posh woman in a low-cut white top and short white skirt talking in a fruity voice about bumble bees with exploding genitals and the spoonworm who snorts her husband up her spout. From time to time actors dressed in colourful animal and insect outfits burst into song.
There was little alternative but to agree with the woman in white - Dr Olivia Judson, of Imperial College, London - as she opened the doors of her clinic for love: "It's more outrageous than you might expect". For once, such claims proved justifiable. "Get ready for sex like you've never seen it before," she added, sounding like a trailer for a sleazy porn movie.
The creatures came for advice on Dr Tatiana's talk show - a sort of Jerry Springer or Trisha for the animal world. "They're a strange bunch, my guests," she said, again showing an uncanny knack for putting her finger on it.
Memories of Rebecca Loos on The Farm were revived as we watched bulls being teased. This wasn't a case of calling them names and running away but tickling their fancy (very big fancies, as it happened) to get them excited. "Some require a fair bit of work on the part of the handler, others are natural born semen producers," said Brad Sayles, an expert on that sort of thing.
There's a serious intent as his work determines the success of the Ontario dairy industry for years to come.
You may think this is a load of old bull but the good doctor was keen to show what these weird animal activities tell us about human sexuality. The link between us and the iguana with two penises that can't stop masturbating was unclear. Similarly, the female stick insect who complained that her lover "started copulating with men ten weeks ago and he still hasn't finished" isn't something you hear from humans.
It's all the fault of the females. Most in the animal world are "good time girls" whose promiscuous behaviour has forced the male to do all manner of bizarre things to keep her faithful. Take the bee whose genitals explode as he reaches climax, making him fall to his death. The female is "bunged up with his dismembered member", thus preventing her from having sex with anyone else. A suicide sex mission involving a detonating dong, as the doctor so eloquently put it.
As she continued to detail the unusual genitals of many creatures, I began to think how unlike a nature programme with David Attenborough this was. Romping with gorillas is all very well, but why didn't he ever tell us about the banana slug that keeps its genitals behind its right ear?
Published: 05/05/205
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