Apparently in Great Britain at the moment, there is a very fine line regarding what constitutes sexual harassment and talking to your colleagues about the oral sex practices of bats is currently inadvisable. Avoiding discussing THIS ARTICLE (also relating to animal sex, but SFW) also might be a good idea.

Dr. Evans of University College Cork  showed a female colleague an article entitled, “Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time”, which she then deemed as inappropriate. She reported him for the alleged incident as well as for “kissing her on both cheeks” and “for complimenting her on her appearance”.

After the complaints were reviewed, a university administrator decided that Dr. Evans should be subject to two years of “monitoring and appraisal” and strongly encouraged him to get counseling as a result of his “transgressions”. In addition, the censure on his record may affect his tenure, which is quite serious.

While bat fellatio might not sound like the most exciting topic, in the abstract ”Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time”, the study authors claim that:

A positive relationship exists between the length of time that the female licked the male's penis during copulation and the duration of copulation.

Furthermore, the mating pairs spent significantly more time in copulation if the female licked her mate's penis than if fellatio was absent.

The rest of the article isn’t any less specific. Dr. Evans defense was that he was interested in the ramifications of the study for humans.  I can see how comparisons to human fellatio and bat fellatio might cause discomfort for a female colleague and the imagery of the act itself could be quite disturbing.  

That said, I don’t believe that the punishment fits the crime at all in this case. Dr. Evans had shown other colleagues the same article- none of the other colleagues found anything inappropriate about the study and several of those colleagues have risen to his defense. The article, which can be read in its entirety here, was published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal, which should carry some weight behind it.

There is an online petition now stating that the disciplinary actions taken against Dr. Evans are incorrect, which calls for the reversal of the University College Cork’s administrative disciplinary decision. At the time of this post, there are roughly 2,000 signatures on the petition.