general psychology of animals.
The madness of attributing to beasts the intuitive knowledge of our
moral catechism has created the legend of the elephant's sexual
modesty. These chaste monsters hide, they say, to make love; animated
by a wholly romantic sensibility, they can not give way to their
feelings save in the mystery of the jungle, in the labyrinth of the
virgin forests: that is why they have never been known to breed
in captivity. Nothing is more idiotic; the elephant in the public
garden or the circus is ready enough to make love, although with less
enthusiasm than in his native forest, as is the case with nearly
all beasts newly captive. He breeds under man's eye with perfect
indifference, and no showman can prevent the she-elephant, who is very
lecherous, from manifesting with full voice her shameless desires.
As her vulva opens not between her legs but toward the middle of her
abdomen, Buffon believed that she had to lie on her back to receive the
male. This is not so, but she has to make a particular gesture: she
kneels.
Whales who are by far the greatest mammals, obey a special rite,
imposed by their lack of members and the element in which they live;
the two colossi heave over on their sides like sprung ships, and join
obliquely, belly to belly. The male organ is enormous, even in the
state of rest, six or eight feet long and fifteen or sixteen inches
in circumference. The vulva of the female is longitudinal; near it is
found the udder which projects greatly when she gives suck. This udder
has ejectory power, the whale cub hooks on by his lips, and the milk is
sent to him as from a pump, marvellous accommodation of organs to the
necessities of the milieu.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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