“During superpod aggregations, “the real old and real young ones like hanging out with each other,” Ken narrates. “Females who haven’t seen each other for months just stay together for days on end, and chat around as if wanting to talk about what they did all winter. The young like rolling and tumbling and chasing.” During their parties, play and love flow freely. They’re light on parental guidance, and as in many other dolphins, much killer whale play is a bit X-rated. Young male killer whales start sex play in early childhood. “Even with the little one-year-olds,” says Ken, “soon after they stop nursing, there’s a lot of rolling around with their little snakes out.” Older males aren’t exactly inhibited with each other, either. “We see groups of guy whales with their three-foot wangers draped over each other—pink floyd, we call it.” Like other dolphins, they frequently indulge in same-sex enjoyment, getting help from a friend’s flipper or snout. Many free-living dolphins routinely masturbate against objects, and Ken has even had aroused whales rub against his boat. It’s vigorous but not aggressive. When Diana Reiss put a large mirror in their pool, the seven-year-old juvenile male bottlenose dolphins Pan and Delphi positioned their bodies in front of it—and watched themselves imitate the sex act with each other. (Bottlenose dolphins engage in more same-sexual behavior than any other known creature.) As Denise Herzing concluded, “Dolphins love to have sex and they have sex a lot.” Killer whale females start acting sexual in their teens—and never stop. “It’s pretty interesting when postreproductive grandmas start rubbing against males, sliding along them,” Ken tells me. In a killer whale version of “cougars,” older, menopausal female killer whales seem to entice younger males into sex play. “Any randy young guy,” Ken says. “Sometimes, even young males five or six years old. They’ll get the males all excited. We haven’t seen actual mating, but we’ve seen a lot of penises draped over whales that are upside down and downside up and sideways. They’ll roll over and you can see that their vaginal area is swollen. There’s a heck of a lot more sex than there is reproduction. They’re just very sexual.””
