More clues to the “intriguing” existence of the female orgasm have been unearthed in a series of experiments that saw rabbits being put on SSRIs, US researchers report.

The findings suggest that the human female orgasm harks back to a time when ovulation was triggered by copulation.

Today, some mammals – including rabbits, cats, and camels – display copulation-induced ovulation (CIO). But humans don’t.

The researchers hypothesised that if the neuro-endocrine mechanisms underlying human female orgasm evolved from CIO then pharmaceuticals that negatively affected human orgasm, such as SSRIs, would also affect ovulation in rabbits.