The sordid truth of #MontyThePenguin's sex life | Shed Science

Might Monty the Penguin from John Lewis's 2014 Christmas advert actually be sucker for prostitutes and a "hooligan cock"? Let's see what science has to say about Adélie penguins and their sex lives! TRIGGER WARNING: contains discussion of rape The videos of my Royal Institution talk will be up in the next few days once I've finished editing them - I just wanted to get this video up as soon as possible. References: Hunter and Davis 1998 Female Adélie Penguins Acquire Nest Material from Extrapair Males after Engaging in Extrapair Copulations http://www.jstor.org/stable/4089218 Russell, Sladen and Ainley 2012 Dr. George Murray Levick (1876–1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=8693309&fileId=S0032247412000216 Frozen Planet, BBC, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlbxRBfGAr0 The John Lewis advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860 My website: http://sallylepage.co.uk/ My Twitter: http://twitter.com/sallylepage/ My Facebook: http://facebook.com/shedscience My YouTube: http://youtube.com/shedscience I should add, to avoid potential confusion, that preventing missed opportunities to form a pair is by no means the only reason why this strategy should evolve. The main benefit for the male is to get some extra offspring through successful fertilisations. The benefit for the female is harder to pin down, but is likely both the small benefit of the rock and the larger benefit of having a more diverse set of offspring, so she doesn't put all her eggs in one basket. The paper (which is quite easy to read) goes into a bit more depth about the possible advantages to both sexes.