The New Season: Duck Sexuality. Overshare?

PBS, you naughty, naughty network.

Over a buffet lunch of baked salmon and/or grilled chicken, the topic of conversation the public access network chose was SEX, or rather, the copulating habits of certain species.

Drum roll, please, for the first question from the critics: Do female ducks climax?

Do they ever! Well. Maybe.  According to “pornithologist” Patricia Brennan, a duck behavioral ecologist, female ducks “have what might be the equivalent of a clitoris. I would hope for the ducks that they do, but I don’t actually know.”

Follow-up: Is there really such a thing as rape of a female duck?

“Not in all species, but in some of the most common, like the mallards that you see in your backyard, there is a high level of forced copulations,” Brennan said woefully.

Then she further explained that what happens is that females are already paired. They have a mate they have selected. But some male ducks have a hard time accepting this. So they gang up on the female and she winds up being gang-raped.

But Brennan reassured that the females have all the power. They are able to dump the sperm of one male in favor of another’s.  In other words, duck females get to pick their baby-daddy!

Another question: How did the duck sexuality expert get into this particular line of work?

Brennan couldn’t contain herself in responding. One look at the male sex organ, the phallus, and she was fascinated.

“It was the most amazing organ … it spirals … i  doesn’t fill up with blood. It’s full of bumps and ridges … and the sperm travels on the outside,” she said.

After her first observation of the phallus, Brennan just couldn’t help but wonder: “Where do you put 40 centimeters of phallus?” (The record, she said, is a 45-centimeter phallus, or about 18 inches.)

If you really want to know, and we think you do, tune in to PBS’ upcoming two part series, “What Females Want and Males Will Do.”

-- Maria Elena Fernandez

(Photo: David Zalubowski / AP)