Sexy Science Fact #29 – GOBBLER GANGS

It’s the most delicious week in AMERICA! In a few short days, we’re gonna gather with our extended families, eat ungodly amounts of carbs, and hope no one gets too drunk and starts a scene. And of course: turkey.

Anyway, the dude turkeys during mating season are actually literally called “gobblers.” Like… I don’t even have to look up an old-fashioned-but-hilarious name for these bros. THANKS, LANGUAGE!

So when the gobbler wants to get his giblets rocked, he forms a fabulous gang.

West Side Story

In the gang, there is an alpha gobbler and some of his literal bros and/or cousins. They work together with their fancy tailfeathers to hopefully attract themselves a lady.

Alan Krakauer

But in the end, it is only the alpha gobbler who gets the all goodies while the rest of the gobblers go gravy-less. This may seem like a bummer, but it’s probs due to “kin selection“, meaning when bros help bros (or, insert any gender combination here), genes they share get passed on.

Adventure Time S02E12

But like, Finn and Jake are not really very closely related. So it doesn’t quite hold up as well for them.

Anyway, happy turkey day!

Chiho Kaneko via Naturally Curious

 

Sources

• Kin selection and cooperative courtship in wild turkeys, A Krakauer, (Nature) 
• Wild turkey expert reveals habits of these birds in breeding season, R Sasser, (The Dallas Morning News) 

 

Sexy Science Fact #28 – THROAT BALLS

I am going to try really hard not to make a million teabag jokes in this post. I WILL TRY, OK?

But really. Camel dudes have throat balls. I mean not exactly, in that their actual literal gonads are not in their throats. But they have this thing:

no idea of original source, sorry!

I mean. Throat balls, amirite?

Those danglies are called a dulaa (or dulla or dhula, or doula? who knows) and come from part of the soft palate but really they are just sugar lumps stored in the mouth.

When Mr. Camel is getting all tingle in his dingle, he breathes in and then whooooooshes that air out through his mouth bollocks. (Please watch this video with sound if you can!)

As you might expect, the bigger the sexier. Bigger sacks mean more testosterone which the ladies are SUPER into….. which leads to….!

Shivji Joshi / Nation Geographic Your Shot

Guys, can I please have a pat on the back because there were NO teabag jokes. *tear* I am growing up.

 

Kudos to my friend Conni who suggested this topic!!

 

 

 
Sources

• Reproductive Processes in Camels (Camelus dromedarius), R Yagil, (Israel Journal of Veterinary Medicine) note: this is an MS Word document that will open when you click it.

 

Sexy Science Fact #25 – TINKLE MUDPUDDLES

I realize that I wrote about pee like two weeks ago, but GUESS WHAT, I DON’T CARE. This is MY BLAG and I can do whatever I want!

And what I want to do is write about MOOSES. (Moose? Meese?) Because I saw this majestic motherfucker LAST WEEK and so I’m still excited about it!

image credit: mah husband

So, of course after seeing a moose, my first though is: what kind of weird sex stuff does this dude do?

And the answer involves number one! (duh)

Now unlike giraffes and lobsters where it’s the lady doing the weeing, for mooses, it’s the bull. He makes a magic yellow mudpuddle that the moose cows just CANNOT resist. They often fight for the chance to roll around in his piss mud. Whoever wins gets to take a wallow in that sweet, sweet pee.

Mike Jackson / Best of the Tetons

The smell of his golden shower gets her ALL RILED UP and ready for some sweet moose-on-moose action!

Dan Kehlenbach

BONUS PIC of a moose peen here!!

Sources

• Putative Pheromones in Urine of Rutting Male Moose (Alces alces): Evolution of Honest Advertisement?, C Wittle et al (Journal of Chemical Ecology)
• Are Moose Mice? The Function of Scent Urination in Moose, D Miquelle (American Naturalist)
• Seasons of the Moose, J Promack & T Sanker (Book)

Sexy Science Fact #24 – SHAKE THAT JELLY

On the list of super sexy looking animals, maybe we have the jaguar, a fancy stallion, the flamboyant cuttlefish, and perhaps the blue porcelain crab. The lowly box jelly probably doesn’t even rank. But what they lack in splendor, they make up for in swagger!

One particular species of box jelly, Copula sivickisi, has a special trick up their sleeve. The dudes can DANCE!

Florida Museum of Natural History

(Fun fact – if you have a picture of a jelly upside-down, it looks like it is dancing!)

I mean, sorta? In a paper written in German that I did not read, it’s allegedly called a “wedding dance” and in English it’s described as a fella reaching out his tentacles to a lady, then he pulls their partner around in what I can only imagine as a jelly tango. (If you google “jelly tango”, you will find sex toys, perfect!)

Happy Nice Time People

Eventually, he pulls her in for some mouth-on-mouth (or manubrium-on-manubrium, if you want to be technical) humping. He gives her his sperm, they de-attach, and maybe go mouth-bang some other jellies because they are jellies and don’t have any semblance of monogamy.

Alvaro Migotto / Smithsonian

If you’re dying to see a video… one technically exists. It’s weird and won’t embed here, but the soundtrack is AMAZING. Watch here!

Sources

• Courtship and reproduction in Carybdea sivickisi
  (Cnidaria: Cubozoa), C Lewis & T Long (Marine Biology)
• Mating in the box jellyfish Copula sivickisi—Novel function of cnidocytes, A Garm et al (Journal of Morphology)

Sexy Science Fact #23 – THIRSTY GIRAFFES

When I was really little, my favorite animals were giraffes. No idea why, other than, sure they are cool. They got replaced with cats in elementary school, and then octopuses in high school.

But I still have an affinity for giraffes. And they sure have an affinity for drinking pee!

kamikatze07 / youtube

Not because they’re thirsty, but because they’re thirsty.

When a dude is ready to go to Pound Town, he rubs his head up against his tootsie’s booty and if he’s lucky, she’ll let out a wee stream of wee for him to sip.

Mike Read / arkive.org

BUT WHY? He’s checking out if she’s ready to make a baby, too! Physiologically, at least. This doesn’t mean she’s emotionally ready!

So he follows her around, trying to stick his pickle in her pickle jar. This can take hours or days because this future mama wants to make sure her baby-daddy is worth the effort and no one better is going to come around in the meantime. Sometimes he goes for it and she’s all like “nah” and just walks away.

no good source for this, sorry!

But eventually, she might decide he’s pickle-jar-worthy and then… in a spectacular feat of hopefully managing to not fall down mid-coitus, they smush uglies!

Bryan Jackson

Source

• Giraffe social behaviour, D Pratt & V Anderson (Journal of Natural History) side note: This article was so fun to read! Select quote: “when the bull nuzzles her rump, she must produce a stream of urine if he is to catch some in his mouth and savour it.”

Sexy Science Fact #19 – CLAWED GOLDEN SHOWERS

Maybe you’ve heard that wiz is sterile, but guess what… YOU’RE WRONG. But it’s still probably OK to drink it if you think you’re going to die (maybe? there are arguments against this, but I dunno, I’ve never almost died and if you’re ever in that situation, do you trust the US Army or Bear Grylls more?). If you’re into watersports, you go Glen Coco. Dan Savage says it’s generally safe, especially if you’ve loaded up on beers beforehand.

If you’re human of course.

If you’re a lobster, beer is probably a bad idea? But pissing on your lover is probably not.

Lobsters do some elaborate flirting for each 2-ish-week-fling they get into. This sometimes starts with a fight, as the dude doesn’t realize it’s a lady vying for his attention and spunk, rather than another bubba trying to steal his home. But once she pees on him from her face he realizes all is good and maybe he can get laid now?

Let’s not skip the part about how lobster golden showers come from the face. From their “nephropores”/peeholes:

Breithaupt et al

I love that picture because it looks like the lobster has gone full-on Mr. Burns.

Anyway, after she’s drained her main vein, the lobsterella has hopefully convinced her would-be romeo to stop attacking her and start getting to know her, biblically.

Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Facebook

Even though that looks like some hot missionary lobster-on-lobster pounding, lobsters fertilize externally, so there is no PIV happening here, just spew, spew, spew.

 

 

Sources

• Sex-identifying urine and molt signals in lobster (Homarus americanus), J Atema & D Cowan (Journal of Chemical Ecology)
• Urine release in freely moving catheterised lobsters (Homarus americanus) with reference to feeding and social activities, Breithaupt et al (Journal of Experimental Biology)
• Agonistic Behavior in Freshwater Crayfish The Influence of
  Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors on Aggressive Encounters and Dominance, P Moore (Book Chapter)
• Unknown Life of Lobsters: Sex, Robots, and Beyond, S Markey (National Geographic News)
• Sex, violence, and pee in the face – lobster love turns out to be a smelly business (Fish and Aquatic News)

Sexy Science Fact #16 – DAREDEVIL FOREPLAY

Did you have a great ‘MURICA DAY over the weekend?*

Atomic Mall

I hope you celebrated by eating something deep-fried, setting something on fire (possibly a your deep fryer), drinking too much beer (which is maybe why you set the deep fryer on fire), and of course, the most American thing possible – participating in near-death flirtations like our national emblem!

When bald eagles want to get their feathers twiddled, they must first complete a DEATH-DEFYING DANCE! This involves soaring really high, grabbing each other by the talons, free falling until they almost reach the ground and then releasing each other just to start over and and do it again. This is called “cartwheeling”, because who doesn’t want to associate something children do with raptor sex?

Brad Hill

Once they’re riled up enough, they retreat to a nest for a sexy and delicate cloacal kiss!

Jeffrey Sidle

Now, as you might imagine this can end in tragedy. BUT THIS BLAG IS ONLY ABOUT THE FUNNY. So let’s forget the sad parts and think about how sometimes the eagles get stuck to each other and then fall to the ground embarassed, only to have a set of onlookers appear and take eagle sex selfies.

Seattle Police via Kiro TV

SORRY LOVERS, now everyone knows you’re sloppy at foreplay.

*Lip smushes to all my non-American readers, as well! Who is reading me in Kuwait?? And Turkey?? And Thailand?? You guys are also awesome and I hope you celebrate your country’s independence day however is appropriate for you whenever it is!

Sources

• American Eagle Foundation
• Michigan Department of Natural Resources
• Seattle police: Officer protects crowd from two eagles ‘erotically-entwined’ (Kiro TV)

Sexy Science Fact #7 – MUSICAL GENITALS

Today we’re talking about the SWEET TUNES of the lesser water boatman, a tiny aquatic insect. These little buggers are about 2mm long and look like this:

National Geographic

LOOK AT THAT FACE. THOSE PRECIOUS MOMENTS EYES. THOSE LITTLE SWIMMING LEGS.

The dudes (and I’m using dude in the gendered way here, not in the “later dudes” way that I might use when talking to you dudes) can “sing” at volumes as high as 100db, which is as loud as a motorcycle or lawn mower. All that volume coming from such a tiny bro! This is for sure the loudest sound to body size ratio in animals. Pretty fly for a fly guy, amirite?

But wait! This is SEXY SCIENCE FACTS. Who cares about this junk?

Remember how sing was in quotes above? I don’t know why every article calls it singing. What this macho man is doing is literally RUBBING HIS WEEWEE across his basically WASHBOARD ABS to make this noise. What would that even be called? Weewee abs tunes? Xylopeen? Musical genitals?

imgarcade

This picture makes me uncomfortable. Imagine it’s a tiny adorable insect instead.

Now think about a human male doing the water boatman thing. It is hilarious and also horrifying. There is no science in that statement, I just wanted you to think about it.

WANT MORE? Here is a sound recording of it:

OH WAIT, this one is better!

Sources

• So Small, So Loud: Extremely High Sound Pressure Level from a Pygmy Aquatic Insect (Corixidae, Micronectinae), J Sueus et al (PLOS One)