My, my what delicious wee you have - The sex lives of giraffes really take the piss

The last time you were scrolling through Hinge and matched with someone, did you find yourself wondering what their urine would taste like? The answer is probably no (at least I hope). Unfortunately, that’s not going to cut it for a male giraffe. Researchers have found that a male giraffe will dip their tongue into a female’s urine stream as a way of determining if she if ready to mate.

Giraffes are not alone in this urine-tasting behaviour, however most animals will investigate urine on the ground. We can give giraffes a break though as due to the length of their necks it would be quite a lot of effort and even potentially dangerous to reach all the way to the ground.

When a male likes the look of a female he will send her a not so subtle signal that he is interested. This could be a shoulder bump or a small kick to the side. This signal is very clear: I want you to pee. Of course the female doesn’t have to, but if she is also interested she will urinate long enough for the male to intercept the stream and get a taste. As he does this his lip will curl back – this is called the Flehmen response. If you’ve ever seen your cat staring at you with its mouth open after sniffing your socks, this is why. This behaviour, whilst slightly strange has a specific purpose. It allows the male giraffe to get the scent from the female’s urine into his mouth where it travels to the vomeronasal organ. 

 So what is it in the urine that the male is looking for? Pheromones. These are chemicals that can affect the behaviour of animals. The vomeronasal organ is part of our olfactory system, more commonly called our sense of smell, and is specifically designed to detect pheromones. It appears that humans don’t have a functioning vomeronasal organ so if we do produce pheromones it’s not clear how or why. Alas, life is not so simple for humans and we have to rely on other signals for finding our partners, but that’s probably for the best.