‘Seal attempts to rape penguin’-When my friend read out this piece of headline from a daily I was rather amused. I thought it was some funny stuff until she told me it was something that really happened.
The first thought that came to my mind was if animals also shows such tendency then why blame humans. It is a known fact that animals would often attack other species when they’re looking for food. But this is the first reported case of a mammal trying to have sex with a member of another class of vertebrate, such as a bird, fish, reptile or amphibian.
The incident was caught on tape by South Africian researchers: An Antarctic fur seal attempting to have sex with a king penguin of unknown gender.
First, the 15-and-a-half stone seal subdued the 2-and-a-half stone penguin by lying on it, which made the penguin flap its flippers while it tried in vain to stand and escape. The seal alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, but the bird played hard to get and the seal gave up.
According to the team who recorded the event, the seal was young, frustrated and sexually inexperienced and thus was unable to find another seal for sex.