Green Porno

Green Porno is a series of short films starring, directed and written by Isabella Rossellini for the Sundance Channel, about animal sexual behavior. To illustrate courtship and mating rituals, Rossellini dresses as animals and interacts with large sets made of cardboard and foam rubber.

Season 1
Season 1 consists of eight episodes about "bugs," principally arthropods (including insects and spiders), but also snails (gastropod mollusks) and earthworms (ringworms, from the phylum Annelida).


 * 1) Spider: a general account spider reproduction, which mentions the absence of a penis on male spiders and the transfer of sperm from the palpi to the epigyne.
 * 2) Firefly: describes firefly courtship which explains that each firefly species has a distinctive pattern of flashes used to attract mates, and that there are "imposters" which mimic the flashing patterns of others' to attract fireflies of other species, whom they eat.
 * 3) Earthworm: describes how earthworms, like many annelids, are hermaphroditic, specifically simultaneous hermaphrodites, producing both sperm and ova at sexual maturity.
 * 4) Fly: includes facts about flies regarding physiology and life cycle, mentioning that they copulate several times a day and lay eggs in dead organic matter.
 * 5) Green_Porno_-_1.jpgSnail: explains that terrestrial snails are usually hermaphrodites, and mentions the use of love darts during copulation.
 * 6) Dragonfly: describes the mating process in dragonflies, during which a male will grab a female using clasping organs on its final body segment, and maintains that grip throughout copulation (before which the male uses its aedeagus to "clean out" the female's vagina, to increase its chances of paternity at the expense of any males with which the female may have previously mated) until the female deposits its fertilized eggs.
 * 7) Praying Mantis: describes the mating of mantises which exhibit sexual cannibalism, in which the female will eat the male during copulation.
 * 8) Bee: describes the structure of colonies and the varied roles of different groups within them, including the queen, non-reproductive females, and drones, and the method of mating by which drones compete to mate.

Season 2
The second season of Green Porno shifted focus from "bugs" to marine life. There were six episodes, two fewer than the previous season.
 * 1) Barnacle: describes the mating strategies of barnacles which have two distinct sexes; in many barnacles, there is a very long penis, and in others, there is extreme sexual dimorphism, in which the male lives within the female and is reduced to its reproductive role.
 * 2) Why Vagina: explains the significance of complementary, species-specific internal and external genitalia in the context of reproduction.
 * 3) Anglerfish: describes the significant sexual dimorphism in deep-sea Anglerfish, in which the male is much smaller and fuses to the female, to act as a "personal sperm bank" for the female.
 * 4) Whale: explains that whales, like many aquatic species, tucks its penis inside its body when not in use, and that male whales must compete for the privilege to mate.
 * 5) Starfish: explains how starfish can reproduce asexually, through fragmentation, as an alternative to sexual reproduction.
 * 6) Limpet: describes the life cycle of a limpet; limpets are sessile, and sex is determined in many species by the substrate to which a sexless limpet attaches - female if directly to a substrate, male if to a female limpet.

Season 3
The third and final season, unlike its predecessors, included animations narrated by Rossellini and appearances by the biologist Claudio Campagna. It narrowed its scope to marine animals, with an emphasis on over-fishing. According to Rossellini, "Because of what I learned in doing research for this series I felt strongly that there needed to be an added environmental element to really inform people how delicate the futures of these creatures are."
 * 1) Harem on the Beach describes the mating system of elephant seals, territorial, polygynous mammals.
 * 2) Bon Appetit - Anthovy describes how anchovies, which live in large schools, reproduce by spawning, with an explanation by Campagna of the ecological danger of over-fishing.
 * 3) Bon Appetit - Shrimp describes the sequential hermaphroditism of some shrimp, and explains that to mate, the shrimp must molt.
 * 4) Bon Appetit - Squid mentions facts about the physiology of squids, and describes their mating process.

Expansion
At the conclusion of the series after the third season, a book of glossy photographs was released with a DVD including all eighteen episodes of the show.

Another series was produced in a similar style, narrowing the focus from all information about life cycles and reproduction to focus exclusively on "the bizarre seduction rituals that often precede the mating process". It was also released through the Sundance Channel, and was written and directed by, and starring Rossellini.