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Last night, I found myself staring at this photograph. I had been looking at it for about five minutes. It’s caption, in its original context, includes the following, “The male [mallard duck] has a long [corkscrew] phallus (bottom), but the female’s genitals (top) corkscrews in the opposite direction.” A corkscrew should rotate; I was trying to figure, by looking at the photo, how this would work.
Stop. Freeze. Step back from this scene. What the heck was this about? It was late, I had other things that I really needed to do, I am not a duck-genitalia scientist. What possible use would knowledge of the mallard duck’s corkscrew penis have in my own life, now or ever more? Do you think duck’s are interested in people penises? I could pretend that I am interested, more generally, in the novelities of Darwinian evolution, but that was not it. I wanted to know how that thing worked. Period.
We are strange beasts (or at least, I am).
The source article is A Most Private Evolution by Susan Milius in ScienceNews (Jan 16, 2009). It begins, “Maybe female seed beetles have their own what-the-bleep exclamation. Even for insects, it’s difficult to imagine any other reaction to a male Callosobruchus maculatus beetle’s sex organ, which has spikes.” (There are beetle close-up photos.)
-Julie
We are strange beasts
The thrust of the topic, so to speak, reminds me of a passage in RA Lafferty’s Space Chantey (a retelling of The Odyssey) in which the hero returns, goes to check his bank account, and finds “a transparent young lady” waiting on him.
“I am unsure,” he says. “Are you people?”
“Actually, we are the newest thing in people,” she replies. “Soon there will be none produced in the old manner. You will have to admit that it was a very grotesque arrangement.”
Comment by Ray Girvan — January 28, 2009 @ 5:58 pm
Heh. Good one.
But … I always think those baby-in-a-bottle future visions (without having read Lafferty’s book, so I’m guessing), go in the wrong direction. We’re much more likely to end up with only vestigal bodies and giant genitalia than to go in the opposite direction and end up as body’s without (or not using) genitalia.
Which is not to say that I personally am … or would … or do … hmmmm … [starting to wonder about Lafferty, though]
Comment by unrealnature — January 28, 2009 @ 7:13 pm
those baby-in-a-bottle future visions
Oh, Lafferty’s not like that. In the context, it’s just there to point up how sterile everything is back at home. The Ulysses character (Roadstrum) gets back, kills the suitors, and then has to listen to Penelope giving interviews about them, all hundred of them:
“There was Thwocky,” she had said. “Shall the first installment be my memories of Thwocky? He was the one you killed first; you remember, Roadsty? Drove the spindle of the player right through his head. Now, of the permissive-motivation of Thwocky, in the impulse-patterns and lassitude-conjoinment, there are nine salient aspects which I shall discuss as I build up the foundation of our intimacy. This can best be understood in the nimbus of the empholeuon motif…”
He decides to go off adventuring again.
Comment by Ray Girvan — January 28, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
[laughing]
Reminds me of the Christopher Plummer character in Twelve Monkeys snarling under his breath at Madeleine Stowe, “Women psychiatrists…”
Comment by unrealnature — January 29, 2009 @ 7:47 am