Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious.

  1. A fetus can masturbate in utero.
  2. You don’t need genitals.
  3. You can have them when you’re dead.
  4. They can cause bad breath.
  5. They can cure hiccups.
  6. Doctors once prescribed them for fertility.
  7. Pig farmers still do.
  8. Animals orgasm more than we think they do.
  9. There was an instrument developed in lab studies – a camera attached to a phallus – to study what happens inside a woman’s vagina when she climaxes.
  10. Kinsey conducted, for lack of a better term, jerk-off in which he lined men up next to each other and had them ejaculate in order to study how far semen can shoot.