Proto writes:
I am not sure that rape is the right word. Does a dog rape a bitch that is in heat?
Does the bitch object?
I have a feeling that we have a fairly naive view of how sex works in the wild.
I know a while back, the deer rut was seen as a battle between dominant male stags with the one with the biggest er, antlers, winning the hareem. The female was seen as passive, accepting the winning stag as a mate.
We had a 'just so' explanation for it - the most successful stag was the fittest, so his genes got passed on. Now it seems that the females are rather more canny than that, often nipping out of the rut to mate with the loser or a pssing young buck while the dominant stag's back is turned.
Complicated stuff, sex.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android