10 Animal Sex Facts to Make You Appreciate Missionary Position

Anacondas mate in a terrifying ball of slithering flesh.

When anacondas sense that a female in heat is nearby, they slither their way over to the "breeding ball." In a breeding ball, up to 12 male snakes writhe around the female in a giant, slimy ball. They compete to leave sperm plugs in the female, and to remove plugs from rival males.
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Male Antechinus stuartii mate themselves to death.

According to Scientific American, these poor, mouse-sized marsupials have only 10 months before their bodies stop producing sperm and they enter an intense, two week-long mating marathon. By the end of mating season, stress hormones coursing through their bodies cause their immune systems to break down. Before the year is through, they'll die due to infections and internal bleeding.

Female ducks have corkscrew-shaped vaginas while male ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises.

According to National Geographic, male ducks are known to violently force themselves on female ducks. Because of this, female vaginas have evolved to prevent pregnancy if it is unwanted.

Duck vaginas are a complex maze of dead-end pockets, and feature corkscrew shape that twists in the opposite direction of a male duck's penis. If a male duck attacks a female duck and attempts to impregnate her, she can physically make sure he won't be successful. And if she is looking for a mate, all she has to do is contract the walls of her genital tract.

Flatworms stab each other with their penises.

 As hermaphrodites, flatworms can inseminate mates or become pregnant. To determine which mate will take on the task of giving birth, they engage in a decidedly unromantic activity known as "penis fencing." Flatworms have two, cone-shaped penises that they attempt to stab their mates with. Whoever inseminates the other first wins.

Male hippopotamuses are into poop play.

When a male hippo wants to impress a lady, he does what any self-respecting horny hippo would do — he uses his tail to fling feces in her direction. Apparently, this is a simple way to share information about his reproductive health.

Leopard slugs have sex while dangling in midair.

Slugs have some of slimiest, most romantic sex of the animal kingdom. According to Slate, hermaphroditic slugs in heat will circle each other for hours, engaging in foreplay that includes nibbling, biting and tail whipping.

When things really heat up, they'll lower themselves from a branch on a thick string of mucus and entwine their bodies. Their penises (often half the length of their bodies) will emerge from the backs of their heads, so that they can inseminate one another. But if they're not careful, their organs can become stuck together, requiring one slug to gnaw the other's penis off. In this case, the victim lives the rest of its life as a female.

Mosquitos perform musical duets before mating.

Humans hate the dreaded "buzz" of an approaching mosquito. However, for fellow mosquitos, that buzz, which is actually the sound of wings flapping, acts as a kind of love song.

Male mosquitos "buzz" at between 550 and 650 Hertz while females buzz at about 350 to 450 Hz. When female mosquitos fly close to male mosquitos, they harmonize their wing flapping as a signifier of good health and fitness. If a male can't match a female's song, she's on to the next one.

Male Northern Darwin frogs keep their developing babies inside their mouths.

While it's typically the mother's burden to birth offspring after mating, this isn't the case for Darwin frogs. After females lay three to seven eggs, male frogsscoop them up into their mouths, where they stay until they are fully formed. The father then spits them out.

Scientists have used panda porn to get pandas in the mood to mate.

At the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, researchers finally encouraged a 5-year-old female panda to mate after showing her a homemade video of pandas getting it on. According to the South China Morning Post, the young panda initially seemed uninterested in mating with her male partner. The researchers showed her the video as an educational experiment, and soon after, she was mating like a pro.

Sex gets pretty brutal between Australian redback spiders.

his poisonous spider is known for one of the animal kingdom's most gruesome mating habits, known as sexual cannibalism. Biologist Maydianne Andrade, who's researched this mating habit, explains that a female will start to devour its male mate while they're still having sex.

In a PBS interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Andrade says, "He will insert in the female, and then he'll flip and basically do a somersault to a position where his body is immediately above her fangs...She'll actually pierce him and begin to chew up parts of his abdomen and eat him while he's mating with her."