My recent recent excursion into the world of the earwig led, predictably, to the barnacle, because that is the nature of rabbit holes. Just as rabbit holes, themselves, famously lead to more rabbits, the pursuit of information in a medium with hyperlinks can lead to barnacles, if you’re doing it right. If you’re not doing it right, it could lead to conspiracy theories, but we’re trying to stay in the happy zone here.
An amazing amount of science has been perpetrated on the earwig, mostly by one fellow in Tokyo. Hey. It’s hard to find fresh thesis subjects these days. Among other things, Yoshitaka Kamimura removed female earwig reproductive organs and mounted them on a slide. It’s not as much fun as mounting them on a swing set, but you still have to give the guy credit.
The revelation that earwig males have two penises, in parallel, and that they’re as long as their own bodies, generated more questions. What animal has the largest penis? No real surprise there—it’s the blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. The blue whale penis is at least twelve inches. That’s thickness. And it’s almost ten feet long. That’s one Moby…never mind.
You want something that sizable though if you’re a whale because whales are kind of round all over and you need to get a good purchase. They do it missionary style, but in the water it’s sort of irrelevant who’s on top. The penis is retracted into an S-shape inside the body when not called to attention. The testes are inside too, which presents an evolutionary challenge. Males of most mammal species have scrotums, the purpose of which is to keep the testes banging around outside the body so the sperms don’t cook, but such a structure would make no sense in the ocean, which is too cold almost everywhere. Plus it would ruin their line. Whales want to be streamlined. So they keep their sperms ready to roar by redirecting cooled blood from the fins and flukes toward their balls.
If you were still looking for an untapped biology thesis, you could do worse than boning up on blue whale penises. Evidently we’re still just guessing about it, because whales don’t want you to watch, or they’d be on dry land somewhere. We don’t even know exactly how they get an erection, although it probably does not involve blood, or porn.
But what animal has the largest penis in relation to its body size? It’s not the fabled earwig. No, it’s the barnacle that has a penis eight times its own length. This is the sort of thing that can develop when your life strategy is to glue yourself somewhere and your various beloveds are glued someplace else. Mating season among barnacles is a jolly affair, all waving penises looking for a good time. If I’ve witnessed it, I didn’t know it. I was quite taken with barnacles as a child, watching what looked like little egg beaters coming out of their slits, trying to net dinner as water passes over them. My early affection for the barnacle arose from my twin virtues of smallness and extreme myopia. Now that I’m not as bendable and have had my vision corrected, I’m more into birds.
All barnacles have penises to wave around, and once they’re done with them, they resorb them and grow a fresh one next season. Since humans have evolved to invent the remote control, many males of the species are now welded to the couch. But they haven’t needed to develop any remarkable phallic properties, because no one really wants to mate with them.
They resorb then grow new ones?!? Well, it fills the time between mating seasons, I suppose.
I imagine they’re in their little crates thinking: Bigger! Better!
Loved this piece. As a fellow bio major, I always learn new and interesting stuff. But I got bummed out when at the end the piece got very dark.
Oh dear–you aren’t welded to the couch, are you?
Speaking of penises, I watched the Jimmy Kimmel from Dec. 10 today. He was doing the “clip of the year” from the year’s shows. The winner was called “Britain’s Got Talent”, and concerned Matt Barr from London, who has the largest MEASURED penis at 12″. There is a cast of it in the Iceland Biological Museum.
At 12″ that is no longer a penis; that is a foot. And, nuh-uh… you’re not sticking THAT thing up there.
Not even if he inches it?
That’s so sad, on so many levels.
“What do you do best?” “Pull down my pants.”
“What is your biggest achievement in life?” “Pull down my pants.”
“What do you want to be remembered for?” “Pull down my pants.”
It does, however, remind me of an episode of “Coupling” (a British sit-com) in which one of the main characters’ ‘character’ is used as a mold for dildos.
OMG! I LOVED that show! At least the British version. They did an American version, which was pathetic. The best part of the British version, IMHO, was Jeff. Especially the “giggle-loop.” When that actor left the show (he didn’t want to be typecast. So… basically he is not remembered at all. GOT IT!) the show went downhill and died.
Oh boy, the moldmaker I started off using to cast my dinosaur skeletons went on to become a sex toy manufacturer. His big claim to fame was molding the genitalia of some porn star live on the Howard Stern show.
I’ve previously commented on the penile strategies employed by animals with odd body shapes and no hands to help things along. I think I knew about barnacles courtesy of Sir David Attenborough, but actually I’m surprised that they engage in copulation. I would have thought they would just blow out a cloud of sperm and let the current take care of the rest.
On the subject of losing and regrowing penises, I seemed to recall that mice had detachable penises. And that appears to be wrong. They and rats do fill the vagina with a plug after copulation. This has the effect of securing that particular female and ensuring that no other males can copulate until the plug falls out.
Returning to the subject of difficult entries, I was out hiking some time ago and heard an odd clunking noise. I looked and found a rather small box turtle trying to mount a much larger female.
After about half hour of struggling, sliding off and struggling again, he finally managed to get up onto her back, hooked his claws around the front of her carapace only to discover that she was closed for business.
Box turtles can seal the halves of their lower shells or plastrons such that predators can’t get in and certainly a male can’t get his tender equipment past that defense.
He proceeded to nip at her shell, apparently hoping that would induce her to let him in. I never did find out how that guy made out as my lunch break ended before he got anywhere.
Years ago I lived in a bungalow that was infested (inside and out) with slugs. These weren’t the foot long green or even the six inch long brown varieties that we had in Washington State, but still a respectable two to three inches beige with speckles.
Several times I witnessed the slug mating dance. When the weather permitted (rain was involved) they would climb up the walls of my house (outside) and then find an overhang and a mate. They would secure slime ropes, twine together and then pirouette gently as they slowly descended to the ground. I assume they were typical gastropods, engaging in mutual harpooning. Slugs being hermaphroditic fertilize each other by jabbing their beloved with a calcareous harpoon and then injecting sperm. Such are the affairs d’amore of the slimy set.
I declared war on the slugs soon after moving in. I’m usually pretty tolerant, but after going flying after stepping on them several times INSIDE the house and finding them chewing on my artwork I set about killing them.
You’ll no doubt be saddened to hear that I didn’t eat any of them. I just beheaded them and sprinkled them with salt. Didn’t seem to reduce their numbers much. The slugs finally met their end as collateral damage from pesticide treatment for carpenter ants and fleas. I would have thought new slugs would have migrated in after the slug genocide, but that never happened.
“Several times I witnessed the slug mating dance. When the weather permitted (rain was involved) they would climb up the walls of my house (outside) and then find an overhang and a mate. They would secure slime ropes, twine together and then pirouette gently as they slowly descended to the ground. I assume they were typical gastropods, engaging in mutual harpooning. Slugs being hermaphroditic fertilize each other by jabbing their beloved with a calcareous harpoon and then injecting sperm”
Well, WTF, Bruce?! Doesn’t EVERYONE do it that way? Geeze… you’re so judgemental!
As to the box turtles… what part of “I’m not in the mood” did he misunderstand? And watching turtle porn during your lunch break? That is SO beneath you. At least watch Avian porn (No, spellcheck, NOT ASIAN porn… AVIAN!)
Funny post, Murr…. although most are when you have a dirty mind!😈
I guess you’d have to see the harpoon…
That is utter revolting, start to finish. Except for the box turtle. I love how they snap shut. I didn’t think the slug sex was harpoony though. The penises in question just look more like diaphanous blue parachutes. I have not observed it (I HAVE blogged about it) but I’ve seen the aftermath on trees covered in slime, of a damp evening. I had a book of photographs of interesting animals once and it included one of mating slugs, but (I later realized) it was mounted (sorry) upside-down so that the slugs were hanging from their penises. Editors need to know MUCH more than current language usage. I’ll bet the photographer was scandalized.
While in Lisbon Portugal a few years back, I had barnacles for lunch. Not bad, prepared in a garlic sauce. It was at a place called Ramiro, if memory serves. They were a bit chewy, kind of like razor clams can be.
I’d guess either these were all female, or said private parts had been removed.
Or resorbed. ALL of them have ALL the pertinent parts! They’re hermflappadickit!
Barnacles are crustaceans. I’d expect them to taste more like crabs, but maybe the sedentary lifestyle makes them taste like mollusks?
On the Pacific Northwest coast there are giant barnacles (everything is giant out there) that are harvested. I looked for them while I was out there, but didn’t find any.
At our college located about 50 miles from the Pacific, a tank of barnacles in the basement of the biology building opened and closed with the tides over at the coast. How did they know???
COOL!
I’m not so glad I read this right before bed. Probably give me nightmares.
Does anyone else here remember the 1960’s phrase “plaster caster”?
Moving on…
For your consideration: the mating habits of bedbugs. The male has an external sex organ. The female does not. Now use your imagination. That’s all I want to say about that.
Cynthia Plaster Caster, who made much of a muchness? She fossilized people’s erections, and ran for office on the Hard party ticket.
Fossilized is too hard.
God I love you people. Did you know there is a Penis Museum in Iceland?
I believe that’s where the photo is from.
It’s at the Iceland Biological Museum, so just google that.
I’m too lazy to even Google it, but I think Erasmus once wrote something like “If anyone doubts that God has a sense of humor, they have never considered the penis.”