WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps is poised to release the results of a controversial new gender study that aims to absolve its leadership from any negligence or perceived mishandling of the recent nude photo scandal, sources confirmed today.

The week-long research project, which relied on a team of expert anthropologists, biologists, misogynists, and primatologists from the Marine Corps Center for Operational Culture and Knowledge, claims it found evidence that all men are essentially biologically-programmed to share nudes, talk about sex all the time, and denigrate women.

“Men have been interested in sharing pictures of boobs and drawing their own penises since the dawn of time,” said Dr. Richard Hole, a researcher who co-authored the report.

In fact, early cave paintings of female genitalia from the Stone Age inspired Hole and his team to take the project to the field to explore the behavioral patterns of these primitive boobie artists.

“We suspected that the men who drew these paintings did so by hiding behind bushes to catch glimpses at the naked women depicted in them," he said. "We believe they creepily scratched their images on public surfaces for all the world to see. We just needed a way to prove that this is somehow natural behavior. We needed to test it first in another untainted species.”

Given a $15 million dollar budget from the Marine Corps, Hole and his team decided to enlist the help of a group of African silverback gorillas, travelling to the wild jungles of Zimbabwe where they were trained to use smartphones.

Then, Hole and his team patiently waited.

It was not long before one Hole’s research assistants discovered something incredible. The male gorillas had, unbeknownst to the research staff, created a secret Facebook page titled “Silverbacks United.” On it were hundreds of voyeur nude photos taken of female gorillas posted online without their consent. Comments attached to photos encouraged other male gorillas to aggressively “give our bananas to the ladies," in what researchers believe, were sexually-charged remarks implying intercourse.

Hole’s research may have a profound impact on the way the Marine Corps handles the fallout from the recent nude-photo-sharing scandal, and may even help them sweep it under the rug until a news cycle sometime in 2019.