"There was not a shred of a sign of offence taken at the time"

University College Cork in Ireland is coming under international pressure to lift a punishment meted out to one of its academics. Dylan Evans, a psychologist at the university’s school of medicine, has been saddled with a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counselling after discussing a scientific paper with a colleague. The title of the paper? “Fellatio in fruit bats prolongs copulation time”.

As part of what he says was an ongoing discussion on human uniqueness, Evans showed a copy of the fellatio paper to a female colleague in the school of medicine. “There was not a shred of a sign of offence taken at the time,” Evans says. “She asked for a copy of the article.”