Sex with a gorilla

Twice is coincidence. Nevertheless, the core contention about the need for three examples to establish a pattern remains applicable. Tonight, after a season-long dry spell, Masters of Sex well and truly got its freak on, with three separate examples of the erotically off-kilter encounters that used to be its greatest attraction. All it took was a little animal instinct for the show to go bananas once again.

A couple years ago, Benjamin Weissman had a disturbing sex dream about a gorilla. These works raise questions about bestiality, certainly, and taboo desires in general, but they also probe more existential questions about the line between human and animal. Weissman depicts her in various poses — shy, sexy, beatific. Rendered in pastel and charcoal on paper, the drawings also range from isolated portraits to lavish dreamscapes, populated with Renaissance putti and flowers. Surprisingly, art history and religious art are also touchstones. Pop culture references also appear.

This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Published online 14 February Nature doi Katharine Sanderson. Western gorillas Gorilla gorilla copulating in the wild have only ever been seen facing the same way as each other, front to back.

By Ewen Callaway. Female gorillas use sex as a tactic to thwart their rivals, new research suggests. Pregnant apes court their silverback male to stop other females conceiving. Her team chronicled the sex lives of five female western lowland gorillas and one silverback almost every day for more than three years. This kind of competitive behaviour may even help explain how humans evolved into a mostly monogamous species, she says.