Never mind the chaos going on behind the scenes! We need a pretty distraction, stat!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Never mind the chaos going on behind the scenes! We need a pretty distraction, stat!
You’re reading this over breakfast, right? Just want to be sure I’ve caught you at an appropriate moment.
The story is simple: scientists have figured out how deep sea squid, which lack a modified arm for sex, copulate. It’s obvious now — the males have an enormous penis, as long as their whole body. It just hasn’t been easy to notice in the typically dead, flaccid, often somewhat decomposed state of many deep sea squid specimens.
The morbid part is that scientists caught a live specimen of Onykia ingens — well, dying specimen, actually — and they started cutting open the mantle, which prompted a surprising response from the animal. It got an erection and started ejaculating on the table. A two-foot long erection. I’m impressed at both its endowment and the remarkably inappropriate timing of its deployment.
Some of you really want to see this, and others are already planning to run away screaming. I’ll be nice and put the photo below the fold.
But timelapse is always cool.
People are always asking me, “Why squid?” Here’s why.
The cool thing about biology, though, is that you could pick any taxon and make a video about how awesome its members are. Squid just have the advantage of the exotic, living in environments unfamiliar to humans, and so they leap out at us as particularly weird and alien.
(via Success is not an option)
