How to Use copulate in a Sentence

copulate

verb

• Some animals have complex mating rituals before they copulate.
• In some species, males may even refuse to copulate with certain females.
  — Zuleyma Tang-Martinez, Smithsonian, 24 Jan. 2017
• Maybe she is beset by need to copulate, by the desire of the eggs inside her for their own plot of land.
  — María Ospina, The Dial, 31 Mar. 2026
• Males will try to copulate not only with females, but also other males.
  — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 29 June 2019
• After copulating, the two males lay immobile on the seafloor as the female swam away.
  — Jack Guy, CNN Money, 24 Sep. 2025
• The males thrash around trying to copulate, covering themselves with pollen.
  — Kristin Ohlson, Discover Magazine, 2 Jan. 2019
• Or a wet-denim-fetish site, where the turn-on seems to be jumping into a pool or showering with jeans on, then copulating.
  — Lucas Peterson, GQ, 22 May 2017
• In one instance, he is accused of using a trip to a sporting event to rape and forcibly orally copulate a student-athlete.
  — Los Angeles Times, 28 Dec. 2022
• While copulating, female praying mantises often kill their mates and eat them.
  — Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 22 June 2026
• On his shirt, little hippos copulated against a pastel-blue cotton background.
  — airmail.news, 7 Dec. 2024
• Even with the copulating couple caught on camera, the attention is all on the child's response to the spectacle.
  — Marlisse Cepeda, Woman's Day, 26 Jan. 2015
• He was groped over and under his clothes, forced to fondle and orally copulate the perpetrators and repeatedly raped.
  — Jeff McDonald, Mercury News, 12 May 2025
• The notorious sculpture depicts Pan, rustic god of the wild, copulating with a she-goat.
  — Christopher Knight, latimes.com, 3 July 2019
• Fasel and his colleagues observed 93 instances of the bats copulating, mostly in videos shot by Jeucken.
  — Lori Youmshajekian, Scientific American, 21 Nov. 2023
• Now, for the first time ever, citizen scientists have photographed two humpback whales copulating.
  — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Mar. 2024
• Paired with the orchid’s unique color and shape, these adaptations lure male wasps from afar and inspire them to try to copulate with the flower, covering the wasps with pollen in the process.
  — Liz Lindqwister, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 July 2024
• Under pressure to copulate quickly, these males have developed gonopodia with longer tips that are more densely covered in bony structures—perhaps for gripping.
  — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 25 Aug. 2015
• Advertisement All of the male apes at the sanctuary receive vasectomies, but that does not preclude them from copulating.
  — Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times, 8 Sep. 2024
• These tiny guys copulate for up to 14 hours at a time, during which frenzied marsupial males' levels of testosterone and stress hormones skyrocket.
  — Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 9 Oct. 2013
• The short answer is that the Copenhagen Zoo has a no-contraceptives policy (and animals like to copulate).
  — Christie Wilcox, Discover Magazine, 14 Feb. 2014
• And finally, wouldn’t being near-perfectly still for an hour make a pair of copulating octopuses ridiculously exposed to predators?
  — Jacek Krywko, ArsTechnica, 2 Apr. 2026
• Once the toxin took effect, males mounted the females and copulated for between 40 and 75 minutes, without the risk of being gobbled up.
  — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Mar. 2025
• Danish challengers, asked to make a dessert fit for a bachelor party, offered buttercream buttocks and fondant figures copulating under the covers.
  — The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
• In some species males increase their reproductive success by forcing females to copulate with them, usually by grasping the female or pinning her to the ground to prevent her from escaping.
  — Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 21 June 2016
• Its first appearance in American print resulted from an 1846 Missouri court case in which a man stood accused of copulating with a horse.
  — Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
• Local folklore holds that copulating on the giant's crotch will help a couple conceive a child, and there is an Iron Age earthwork known as the Trendle at the top of the hill in which the giant has been carved.
  — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 8 Jan. 2024
• Advertisement The lawsuit alleges Harris comforted the boy and during the encounter began forcibly orally copulating the teen.
  — Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 19 Dec. 2024
• The Santal, in South Asia, believed that witches (always female) copulated with spirit familiars and devoured the organs of children.
  — Manvir Singh, New Yorker, 17 May 2025
• Religious leaders specified days on which, for medical or liturgical reasons, married couples were not to copulate—one Irish rule book from the early seventh century excluded a good two-thirds of the year.
  — S. C. Cornell, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2025
• In November 1995, Funston took a 5-year-old boy into some bushes, pulled down his pants and orally copulated him, prosecutors said.
  — Clara Harter, Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2026