In November 2020, Gina Berce Lipor was scrolling Twitter when she happened upon a photo of three North Atlantic right whales. They were swimming at the surface of Canada’s Bay of Fundy and were, the caption explained, amorously engaged. The image, a grainy black-and-white enlargement from 2000, takes a moment to decipher. Linger, and you’ll see a female in the center, rolled onto her back, her white-patched belly cresting out of the water. Arching toward her are two appendages. They are large and ever so gently ridged, and appear, let it be said, quite dexterous.

“Like a hose,” Berce Lipor says.

“Like a really big hose,” adds her sister, Christa Berce. “It’s just captivating.”

Captivated, Gina read the corresponding study—it reported that this double copulation had lasted 40 seconds—and then shared the photo in a group chat with her sister and each of their partners. A flurry of pictures followed: echidna penises (four heads), softshell turtle penises (one head, five lobes), sugar glider penises (forked). It became a competition. Who could find the most alien-looking genitalia, and who could correctly identify its host? “I can still remember a bat challenge that really got me,” Gina says.

Five years later, that challenge is for all. The Wisconsin-raised sisters—Gina, 36, moved to Portland in 2017, while 31-year-old Christa joined in 2022—are behind a lightly bawdy, Kickstarter-funded game called Mate, which schools players on animal mating behaviors and anatomy. Teams compete to answer multiple-choice questions, estimate measurements, draw terms, and, obviously, scrutinize a few members. “A Party Game for Feral Naturalists,” says the box—a nice one, burnt orange with whimsical Victorian flourishes and a woodblock print of two dragonflies mid-coitus. The artwork comes from two more Portlanders: My Truong did design and illustration, while Robin Corbo made the prints. It ships to Kickstarter supporters this month, while latecomers can find it online and at a handful of spots locally, including Second Shapes Bookstore in Kenton. A launch party takes place at Living Room Wines on Tuesday, December 9, 6–8pm.

Mate has freaky phalluses. But also parrot cloacae and snail sex. After the initial photo swap (they joked within 48 hours that they should make a game), they kept studying. Gina ripped through library books and Christa combed studies, and the deeper they got, the more variety they saw. They learned about intersex black bears and necking male giraffes and female albatrosses raising chicks together. They learned that female sloths will scream for sex (the males come racing, relatively), and that female bonobos will shimmy their hips at other females when they want some. They watched leopard slugs mate, the hermaphroditic gastropods entwined and dangling from a rope of mucus as David Attenborough narrates. They marveled at the “unparalleled vaginal diversity” of waterfowl.

“Male domination—our culture loves that,” Gina says. “And it’s so visible. But once you start, like, dissecting ducks, you see that’s not the whole story.” (Though less famous than their corkscrew penis counterparts, duck vaginas are convoluted, labyrinthine organs that have evolved as barriers against forced copulation. "I looked at Google search trends recently about duck penises versus duck vaginas, and the disparity in interest is wild," Gina says. "Except for one—Billings, Montana. I believe there's someone there who is obsessed with duck vaginas.")

To ensure they were showcasing the breadth of animal sexuality, the sisters kept a spreadsheet tracking questions by category. They’ve done the math on Mate’s 128 cards to ensure that in an average round players encounter two to three instances of females enjoying sex or expressing reproductive autonomy, and three examples of queer animals. They call their company Fascinary and have designs on Mate expansion packs—and maybe a game about human sexuality for high school students.

Game development became personal. As kids, the sisters say they were taught a clear distinction between what was natural and what was not. The research for this game upended that. Gina says she’s in a “questioning kind of state” around gender. “Seeing that there isn’t just one way to be female has been, I think, really healing,” she says. She calls herself “bi, pan, whatever,” waving a hand with each word. “When we have these rules we put on animals, we’re putting those on ourselves, too. Seeing and reveling in the diversity has made me have peace with the ways I don’t conform.”

Christa agrees. “Things never felt quite right with certain expectations put on us as girls growing up,” she says. “Seeing that you can express your gender and sexuality in whatever way feels right to you—that has been a really unexpected benefit,” she says. “Yeah, also bi, pan, whatever.” How far they've come from dick pics.