Fascinating — models in software games have some subtle but intentional design features. There is a game character in Overwatch (which looks like a fun game, but since it’s PC only, I’ve never tried it) named Tracer who was the focus of some controversy a while back because some of the promotional materials emphasized her lovely, shapely butt maybe a bit overmuch. Now there has been a detailed analysis of the design of her character to identify what makes her butt so nice in every view.

Wu discovered that the primary cause of Tracer’s plump backside is an inhumanly deep buttcrack. In fact Tracer has a butt crack so deep that regular humans could not possess similar physiology and survive. Such a crack would inevitably interfere with organs and the body’s structural integrity.

As a result of this bizarrely deep posterior, Tracer can be put in literally any pose, under any lighting, and her butt will still cast a shadow implying depth, plumpness and tautness. The way Tracer’s bottom is emphasised in any situation is a genuine feat of engineering.

On top of that, there’s more. Another aspect of Tracer’s butt that plays a big part in its eternal visibility is the fact that her outfit is either impossibly tight or glued to her ass cheeks.

Take a look at the image on the far right. Natural fabric would find a resting point between the peaks of the two cheeks, naturally bridging the gap. If the material pulls in to show cheek definition, this would be the result of both cheeks physically trapping the fabric. This is different, in that the fabric follows the contours of the cheeks and buttcrack without the two cheeks making contact. For the titillation of boys and girls worldwide, Tracer suffers a permanent wedgie that is literally designed to make her individual butt cheeks shine.

Wait, but what about realism? What about ethics in gaming?

We’ll get to that once I’m done marveling that there is such a thing as virtual butt analysis, and that there are game designers and artists working hard to maximize butt exposure.

Nature is also working on it. Check out Jon Snow’s butt.

They might have properties of a material that would interest an engineer, but I’m still not putting on a shirt made of fire ants.

First, a little background:

When squid mate, a male transfers its sperm to a female enclosed in complex structures called spermatophores. These are accumulated in the spermatophoric sac, a storage organ inside the mantle cavity, before ejaculation through the penis. Squid that spawn in shelf waters and epipelagic waters of the open ocean usually have short penes hidden completely inside the mantle. Males pick the ejaculated spermatophores from inside their mantle with a specially modified arm called the hectocotylus, to transfer them to the female. Females spawning in shallow water have special places for spermatophore attachment on the body, both externally (skin ring around the mouth, and back of the head) and internally (oviducal gland openings near gills) (Nesis, 1995). As female squid lack a vagina, the use of a highly articulated arm (hectocotylus) for transfer and placement of spermatophores is more precise than by means of the comparatively poorly articulated penis.

So male squid have penises deep in their mantle. Many species have short penises, and they also have a specialized arm, the hectocotylus, that they use to reach in to their own mantle to scoop up ejaculate and then place it in the appropriate place in a female.

Other species lack the hectocotylus, but instead have a long penis, as some investicators discovered. They are also capable of erections, which was a surprise.

A mature moribund male of the greater hooked squid Onykia ingens (Smith, 1881) (38.5 cm mantle length, 1180 g body mass) was caught on the Patagonian slope south of the Falkland Islands (July 2006, 53°20′S, 59°31′W, 1050 m depth). When the mantle of the squid was opened for maturity assessment during processing of the catch onboard, the penis of the squid, which previously had extended only slightly beyond the mantle margin, suddenly started to erect. It became rigid and quickly elongated to 67 cm total length, almost the same length as the whole body of the animal (mantle, head and arms; Fig. 1). Immediately after elongation, several spermatophores were ejaculated from the penis tip.

So not only do they have penises capable of erection, they can get erections when dead and partially dissected, which means I can now show you a zombie squid dick pic.

(blame Tommy Leung)

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Arkhipkin AI, Laptikhovsky VV (2010) Observation of penis elongation in Onykia ingens: implications for spermatophore transfer in deep-water squid, Journal of Molluscan Studies 76(3):299–300.

They aren’t colorful enough, either.