The clitoris of female bottlenose dolphins (Tersiops truncatus) is probably a pleasure organ, analogous to its function in humans. This is the conclusion reached by a working group led by Patricia Brennan from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts after anatomical studies on the remains of eleven stranded bottlenose dolphins. As the team reports in Current Biology, the clitoris contains plenty of nerve endings under the skin; this is also two-thirds thinner than the surrounding skin, which increases sensitivity. The working group sees these findings as evidence that the clitoris serves to provide pleasure during sex.
The working group also found tissue that can swell when aroused. According to their findings, the organ is curved in an S-shape, which suggests that during sex it lengthens and protrudes from the body to be better stimulated by the male’s penis. Or in another way, as observations on wild bottlenose dolphins show: homosexual intercourse is just as common between males as between females. The animals also often have sex overall, even outside the fertile period. This suggests that animals enjoy sex in all forms, which a functioning clitoris contributes to.
The findings suggest that female pleasure works surprisingly similarly in bottlenose dolphins as it does in humans – even anatomically. “The entire pelvic girdle of bottlenose dolphins is very different from that of humans,” says Brennan, “so it was surprising to see how similar the shape of the clitoris is.” So it’s likely that sexual pleasure is nearly universal in mammals . The study also offers a closer look at the sexuality of whales and dolphins, which is usually very difficult to observe and little is known about it – especially the female genitalia, which is often neglected in research. It at least makes it plausible that the blue whale has the largest clitoris in the animal kingdom. So far, however, no one has checked this.