This unusual behavior of wild chimpanzees was revealed in a report by researchers from Bulindi, Uganda in August 2018. In which a teenage male chimpanzee named Araali was seen putting his penis in an old plastic bottle.
Scientists saw chimpanzees playing with empty plastic herbicide bottles, making back and forth movements with their genitals in the mouth of the bottle. The team reported that the chimpanzee’s face showed a playful look with an open mouth expression as if they were having fun.
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Now scientists are figuring out where masturbation behavior comes from chimpanzee wild. The team doesn’t believe it’s related to a way to improve sperm quality or as a sexual conduit, given Araali is the juvenile chimpanzee in the group.
“Araali’s masturbating behavior most likely resulted from her motivation to examine and play with new human objects,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
The shape of the bottle probably elicits Araali’s autoerotic response that she recognizes its suitability for the purpose. Remembering Araali’s face playing with a bottle shows his masturbating behavior is ‘fun’.
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Araali’s behavior is very different from chimpanzee in a zoo or captivity. The primates here usually masturbate with their hands, feet, and mouth, against the walls of the cage.
Seeing similar behavior in the wild broadens the understanding that the world’s closest human relative, the chimpanzee, can actually masturbate with man-made objects.
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