Manatees Mate Through Gang-Rape?

One of the most popular New York Times stories today is about manatees, and debunking the perception that the slow-moving mammals lack intelligence. According to the article, scientists have long assumed that the manatee is a simpleton based on its brain size and shape. Manatees have the lowest brain-to-body ratio of any mammal. In addition, manatees' brains have smooth surfaces and exhibit none of the folding found in other mammals. Only now are scientists coming to realize that manatees are quite clever, despite what has been perceived as a lack of complexity in their brain structure, and that their tactile sensory skills rival, and in some cases exceed, the skills of human beings.

I find articles like this - on the intelligence of animals that has gone undetected by human beings because of erroneous assumptions and biases - fascinating. Fascinating, because as a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series (the books, not the movie), I'm partial to believing that the mice or the dolphins or some other sentient being - cats? - really have been running the show all along. Maybe it's my predisposition to root for the underdog, but I love the idea of human beings getting shown up by animals. There's so much we, as humans, have yet to discover about our world and its other inhabitants, it's nice when we make some progress towards understanding nature; it gives me some faith in our humanity, that we can see the value in other beings.

But now to the point: In the midst of reading this interesting, feel-good article, focused as I mentioned on debunking preconceived notions, I came across this jarring section: "Their social world is relatively straightforward. Males mate with females in a violent affair that resembles a gang rape; manatee calves stick close to their mothers for about two years, then head off on their own."

It's remarkable - in addition to offensive and irresponsible - how even in the midst of critiquing how past misperceptions and assumptions regarding manatees have obscured an understanding of their true nature, the author exhibits no restraint in making, or repeating, gendered assumptions when it comes to describing the sex act of manatees.

A gang rape is a violent and brutal act. It is also an unwanted violation of the being - usually a female - being raped, and in our human society it has as much, or more, to do with male entitlement, gender, and male power, as it does with sex. And, with the exception of rape as an intentional tool of genocidal war, gang rapes, in the human context, have nothing to do with mating or a desire to reproduce.

How absurd, then, that the author of this piece, or scientists if this is the general perception, would liken manatee mating to a gang rape. In the same piece discussing how until recently scientists thought manatees were sluggish, gentle, simpletons, the author readily jumps to the conclusion that male manatees are engaged in a gang rape scenario when attempting to impregnate female manatees. When interpreting the sex act, biases and assumptions of the author based on gendered notions of human interaction come into play to depict the male manatee as a violent, sexual aggressor because that's how many humans stereotype men during sex. For example, you may have heard the expression, "Men are the gas, women are the breaks" when describing human sexual interaction. Similarly, the female manatee becomes the sexual prey, a victim of a "gang rape," instead of an equal engaged in the reproduction of her species.

Scientists don't even understand the manatee brain. How can they understand the nuances of their sex act? How do scientists know that the manatee males are not performing an elaborate mating dance for the benefit of the female, as we see in other species? Manatees are large animals, and sex can be forceful, in humans and other mammals alike, but does forceful have to equal unwanted, sexual violence? Does sex between one female and multiple males have to be viewed as a non-consensual "gang rape"?

Remember for a moment, that we are talking about beings that have existed on this planet for approximately 50 million years. It's nonsensical to assume that for 50 million years manatees have been reproducing, successfully, by violently gang raping the females among their group. Gentle and slow-moving they may be, but it doesn't seem likely that any population of females would stand for that without some kind of revolt. Looking at it from a more big picture context, it doesn't make any evolutionary sense, and I am unaware of any similar examples, that a species' reproductive success would depend upon half of the species gang-raping the other half.

Creatures make infinitely more progress working with one another than they do working against one another, and I can't think of a better example of working against one another than gang-rape as a method of reproduction. Perhaps the scientists and the author disagree with me, and see gang-rape as a viable reproductive institution. Maybe that explains their odd interpretation of manatee sexual interaction.

Regardless of the exact nature of the underlying gender biases, the description of the manatee sex act as a "gang-rape" tells us far more about the nature of the scientists and the author of the article than it does about manatees. And that's unfortunate because I read the article to learn about manatees, not gender stereotyping. The New York Times should be ashamed.