Putting the “crow” in necrophilia

An overly active sexual response occurs in many species, like a small dog humping your leg. Hell, there are plenty bizarre examples of what human males might resort to when the urge overpowers them. I don't see why researchers would be so shocked by this. Unless maybe for the attention garnering.

> This may be because the crow is less experienced, or more aggressive, or has some neurological issue with suppressing inappropriate responses.

in case of for example seals having sex with penguins http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117-why-seals-have-sex-w... :

"young male seals sexually coercing what appeared to be healthy penguins of unknown gender.

...

The seals were not yet old or large enough to defend harems of female seals, explained de Bruyn."

Also, two male ducks, one of them dead, a scientific paper, 2001:

"Moeliker, C.W., 2001 – The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae) – DEINSEA 8: 243-247 [ISSN 0932-9308]. Published 9 November 2001"

http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/docu...

The talk about it:

https://www.ted.com/talks/kees_moeliker_how_a_dead_duck_chan...

"Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my life"

>>That said, in nearly a quarter of cases, crows did make some kind of contact with dead crows. Like with mammals, we saw that these behavior could be exploratory, aggressive and in rare cases even sexual (about 4% of crow presentations resulted in attempted copulations), with the latter two behaviors being biased towards the beginning of the breeding season. Importantly, the latter two categories of interactions were rarely expressed independently, and it was often a mixture of the first two; in rare cases, all three. In the most dramatic examples, a crow would approach the dead crow while alarm calling, copulate with it, be joined in the sexual frenzy by its presumed mate, and then rip it into absolute shreds.

Truly nature's goths! (referring to the gothic subculture that has a fascination for the macabre and dark :) )

Ah, more material for my "nature is garbage" bucket.