Talk:Animal sexual behaviour/Archive 4

Latest comment: 9 years ago by DrChrissy in topic Formatting quotes
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7

Precoital activity

There should be a section on Precoital activity, including mutual grooming and similar non-aberrant activities. ~E 74.60.29.141 (talk) 02:35, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Comparative analogy

Should this article be renamed Comparative Analogy of Animal vs. Human Sexual Behavior? There needs to be an actual article on Animal Sexual Behavior. ~E 74.60.29.141 (talk) 04:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

NPOV tag

My intent is not to "bite the newbies", rather it seems to me that this article might be starting off on the wrong foot. Consider the following: What proportion of 'animal sexual behavior' relates to activity which promotes the perpetuation of the species? The article should at least be balanced with that in mind. Also, this may be a "rapidly developing field", but the so-called archaic studies of the past are not by necessity obsolete; after all animals have been engaging in sexual activity long before undergraduates have been writing term-papers. ~Just my 2¢ worth. ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 15:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Note also that this article has been given an equal importance rating by both 'Sexuality' and 'Animals' WikiProjects.

Currently omitted topics (partial list):

  • Mating ritual
  • Mating hierarchy within societal groups
  • Precoital activity
  • Speciation morphology in response to sexual behavior pattern development and reproductive isolation


~2¢ more ~E 74.60.29.141 (talk) 17:18, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Discuss: I'm not sure what the controversy is, but I'll note that a lot of behavior contributes to propagation of the species, if only indirectly. Evolution is, of course, merely a matter of shaving the odds, so some odd behavior may improve the chances, if only just a little. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 15:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I removed the tag while doing some cleanup of the article;[1][2] I removed it because, despite what the IP stated above, I don't fully or maybe even at all see how that it is a WP:Neutral issue, and because there's no support (other than the IP's comment) for the tag. It's an expansion issue, sure, but I don't clearly see a WP:Neutral issue. However, if anyone feels that the tag should be there and can better justify why it should be there, I don't much mind if it's restored. Flyer22 (talk) 17:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Article appears too long - divide into sub-articles?

In its present state, the article is much lengthier than most other articles on Wikipedia. I think it should be divided into sub-articles, to give it a more manageable length. Jarble (talk) 04:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't feel that it needs division. WP:SIZE-wise, it doesn't seem to need it. Like I stated before, too many unnecessary subsection headings can make this article appear longer than it is, just like I stated to you at the Urination talk page. Look at how long the Penis article currently looks, for example, due to the subheadings you added, when it actually isn't that long at all (barely anything in the sections). As seen in the section immediately above this one, I cut down some of the unnecessary subheadings you added to this article. Flyer22 (talk) 04:25, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the addition of all those unnecessary sections was probably ill-advised. I created those sections as anchors for links from other articles, before I had learned how to use the anchor template properly. It might be best to replace the unnecessary section headers with anchors, using the anchor template.Jarble (talk) 04:34, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, which of the sub-sections in this article should be condensed further? Jarble (talk) 18:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for drastically condensing the sections at the Penis article by removing unnecessary subheadings. As for this article, I'll think over which sections should be condensed or condensed further by removing unnecessary subheadings. But if you assess any that you feel can be condensed by removing one or more subheadings, combining them under an already-established one or a new one, then go for it. Flyer22 (talk) 18:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Attribution problems

This article suffers from several attribution problems. First, it relies on too many quotes. Second, the attributions are often way too detailed - we do not need to know in the text the name of the person, date, journal, university, or the rest of their life story! Third, some of the references are are not references at all, e.g. references #30, #31, #35 __DrChrissy (talk) 17:22, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Animal sexual behaviour

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Animal sexual behaviour's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "cons":

  • From Bat: Constantine, Denny G. (1962). "Rabies transmission by nonbite route". Public Health Reports. 77 (4). Public Health Service: 287–289. doi:10.2307/4591470. PMC 1914752. PMID 13880956. These findings support consideration of an airborne medium, such as an aerosol, as the mechanism of rabies transmission in this instance. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • From Bobcat: McDowell, Robert L (2003). Endangered and Threatened Wildlife of New Jersey. Rutgers University Press. pp. 23–4, 27. ISBN 0-8135-3209-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT 03:30, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Is sexual behavior just another form of social behavior?

If so I want to post a Social relations to see also. Mrdthree (talk) 09:50, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

No definition of sexual behavior in lead paragraph

THere is no definition of sexual behavior in the lead paragraph. Seems bad. I suppose there is an itemization. But its pretty weak since most of the items in the list use the word that needs to be defined. Mrdthree (talk) 09:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The lead is obviously the way it currently is because there is no one definition of sexual behavior among animals. Flyer22 (talk) 10:22, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Homosexual sheep

The quote is that "Approximately eight percent of [male] rams exhibit sexual preferences [that is, even when given a choice] for male partners"...."We identified a cell group within the medial preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus of age-matched adult sheep that was significantly larger in adult rams than in ewes..." What does the latter mean? - it is not obviously connected with homosexuality. Does he mean that homosexual sheep have a "cell group within the medial preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus" that is larger than non homosexual sheep? Because what he is actually comparing is adult rams to adult ewes.Royalcourtier (talk) 02:59, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Bird sexual behaviour

90% of the article about the sexual behaviour of birds is about "gay" birds. And this is what you think that it is useful if someone wants inform him about the regular behaviour of birds? --78.51.228.72 (talk) 12:36, 31 July 2014 (UTC)


lmao this article is gay as hell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.60.197.159 (talk) 19:11, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

"Role in discussion of human sexuality"

This entire section doesn't come across as very neutral to me. It's also too wordy. Can I fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oxr033 (talkcontribs) 00:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Please do. It is pretty bad right now. Memills (talk) 00:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Grammatical question

Partly copied from Jarble's discussion page (by me, Dartelaar) + additions

Dear Jarble, on this comparing revisions page of Animal Sexual Behaviour you can see (with ctrl+f or other search function) those offspring... third paragraph, last sentence.

English is not my mother language (Dutch is), but I am right, I guess, asserting that those should be followed by a plural noun. I don't know how to correct the sentence or maybe the whole paragraph, started by Flyer22 on 8 March 2014.

So, this possible faulty edit is already there for 8 months. An example that we wikipedians can't make every correction at once.

Dartelaar [write me!] 14:26, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

@Dartelaar: This issue should be discussed on the talk page, since it might also need attention from the article's other editors. 16:05, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

cross species behaviour by dolphins

Dolphins have engaged in cross species sexual foreplay with humans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75KdkV7n2o

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/14/human_on_dolphin_sex_is_not_really_that_weird/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/frisky-dolphin-tries-to-get-busy-divers_n_1862148.html

http://justingregg.com/the-dolphin-rape-myth/

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Dolphin#Social_behavior

Perhaps a NPOV mention should be made of this.

--108.18.178.166 (talk) 23:39, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

This information should be included in Animal sexual behavior#Cross species sex. Jarble (talk) 05:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ appears to be a mirror of Wikipedia, so I have removed it from this list. Jarble (talk) 22:18, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Formatting quotes

The article has many (maybe too many) extended quotes. I have replaced the formatting for these quotes with a new one which, in my view is attractive and preferable. The new formatting was taken from this featured article which was on the front page of Wikipedia yesterday. Feel free to revert if you object. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:43, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I have been having similar concerns about the extended quotes. Yes, there are too many. They give too much space to what are often case-studies or single observations. My own preference is to put them in sentence form with " " around them, rather than making them stand out as if they have some sort of importance. They are often anecdotal and although verifiable, I do not trust the reliability.__DrChrissy (talk) 00:50, 8 February 2015 (UTC)