ABSTRACT

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Male sexual behavior includes a series of precopulatory, copulatory, and postejaculatory behavioral patterns. Compared to classical studies, more attention has been given recently to expressions of precopulatory behavior as indicative of the level of sexual motivation, as well as to postejaculatory behavior as indicative of sexual satiety in mammals. Copulatory behavior has been the most extensively studied, regarding its behavioral patterns, their temporal sequence, and the hormonal, neural, social, and environmental factors involved in its expression (Dewsbury 1979; Larsson 1979; Meisel and Sachs 1994; Hull and Rodríguez-Manzo 2009). Nevertheless, there is a dearth of studies providing a detailed description of the morphology of the various copulatory behavioral patterns, including the characteristics of their motor and genital components.