“When a seagull begins to take off, it flaps its wings,” he said. To tell me how sex sounds evolved from a small grunt into the screaming spectacle we know them to be today, he began by telling me a story about seagulls.

“Sex sounds are a physiological response to exertion.” This led me to Barry Komisaruk, a neuroscientist and the author of The Science of Orgasm, a man I knew would have no problem waxing poetic about these mechanisms. When I read that, I got a little jealous - theoretically, during sex, the people who grunt enthusiastically can add force to their hump. Researchers from the University of Nebraska Omaha found that professional players increase the ball’s velocity by 3.8% if they grunt while taking their shot. There is even a study that proves McCune’s point. “When you squash the grunt,” she said, “you’re having to use energy that you could have used for your stroke to suppress a vocalization.” McCune went on to explain that tennis players often grunt when they hit a ball off their racket and that trying to stop the sound can actually hurt their game. Translation: In the right circumstances, the sound just happens. Expiration against the constricted glottis produces pulses of sound.” What happens, more or less, is this: “Under conditions of metabolic demand, activation of the intercostal muscles to maintain lung inflation during expiration sets in motion reflex contraction of laryngeal muscles, creating a system under pressure that lengthens the expiration phase of the breath and enhances oxygenation of the blood. She explained that the grunt is a physiological response to exertion, an epiphenomenon occurring when the body needs more oxygen. Lorraine McCune has been studying the grunt at Rutgers University since 1987. Are humans actually predisposed to being screamers, and if so, what is the purpose of all the noise? I wanted to take a closer look at what I might be missing out on. Even though we’ve discussed it and he said he doesn’t need me to be vocally porny, I can’t help wondering if he’s looking at me during sex and thinking, “Is this thing on mute?” By the time I was with Dave, my sonic landscape was still most closely matched with a library.

As the years went on, I had other boyfriends, but my decibel level remained disappointingly similar.

Sex moan sound effect 1 hour loop