Discoblog » Sex & Mating

The Perfect Gift This Holiday Season: The Neanderthal Test

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:48:48 +0000

If you’ve ever wondered if your slothful spouse—he of the prominent brow and grunted endearments—has caveman blood, wonder no more. Genomics company 23andMe, purveyors of fine genotyping, would like to suggest a gift that will keep on giving this holiday season: the Neanderthal test, which will give you nagging rights for eternity.

The latest gossip says the Neanderthals, the other human species kicking around about 30,000 years ago, did not leave this earth without spreading a few wild oats among our Cro-Magnon ancestors (nudge nudge, wink wink). And genetics, as so many daytime talkshow guests can tell you, is where such secrets go to die. Everyone except Africans (who missed the shackin’ up party that was prehistoric Europe) now has a sort of genetic souvenir, a remnant of our forebears.

That means you can now give a gift that brings new meaning to getting in touch with your heritage. Having recruited one of the biologists behind the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, who developed the test, 23andMe is able to offer you the exclusive opportunity to learn what percentage of your own genome came from those mysterious ancestors. The average is 2.5%, but some of us—perhaps someone ...

Finally! The Ostrich Penis Provides the Answer to a Long-Standing Question

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:24:28 +0000

Penises, as a general rule, are some of the more improbable structures in biology (especially bird penises). There are many ways in which they are marvels of engineering—and prime examples of the truly weird avenues evolution will explore, as long as more babies result. One major miracle is that they manage to stand up, something achieved, in most penises you’re likely to be familiar with, with a huge rush of blood. But bird penises (of course! showoffs) have taken another route. They stand up with lymph instead.

Lymph, if you don’t recall, is blood’s often-overlooked sibling. Charged with aiding in cleaning out the body’s waste and shuttling around various immune components, it circulates in a system of vessels similar to blood vessels (albeit more slowly, since the system’s not hooked up to a central pump) and contains a rich mixture of immune cells, metabolites, and other goodies. Scientists have known for a long time that most bird penises use lymph to get their pick-me-up, but one group of birds had never had their gear fully examined: the ratites, which include ostriches and emus. This gaping hole in our knowledge had languished for a distressingly long time.

Now, however, through four ...

Dizzy Discus Throwers, Horny Beer-Bottle Beetles, and the Wasabi Alarm Clock: the 2011 Ig Nobels

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:07:20 +0000

Those classy folks at the Annals of Improbable Research are at it again. Last night, they announced the 2011 winners of some of the most coveted awards in science: the Ig Nobels.

You should watch last night’s ceremony in its entirety, but here are (drumroll) the winners:

First off, in Physiology…from the Cold-Blooded Cognition Lab at the University of Vienna, Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandle, and Ludwig Huber for their paper No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise, published this year in Current Zoology. As it turns out, if one tortoise is yawning, its buddies won’t join in. Not even if you show them movies of yawning tortoises. In Chemistry…Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami for determining what concentration of airborne wasabi can awaken sleeping people in case of emergency. They are the inventors of the wasabi alarm, described in US patent application 2010/0308995 A1. In Medicine…Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop, and Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman, Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff for illuminating how an intense need to pee can affect your decision-making capabilities in their papers Inhibitory Spillover: ...

150 Kids, Anyone? US Sperm Banks Overdoing It

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:53:27 +0000

Sperm banks are a pretty great idea: women who don’t have a male partner or whose partners aren’t fertile can choose a genetic father with characteristics they like, such as a certain height, eye color, hair color, hobbies, and so on. Thousands of children are born each year in the United States to mothers who like the sound of “tall, dark, enjoys astrophysics and Shostakovich” or “blond surfer, Ivy-League educated, great sense of humor.”

But something very strange has been going on over the last couple decades, and the New York Times covers it in a recent piece: some donors’ sperm has been used many, many times—so many times, in fact, that people are starting to get alarmed.

Up to 150 children each have been born from the sperm of popular donors, far more than donors and mothers had anticipated. American sperm banks don’t keep rigorous records of children born from donor sperm, nor do they limit the number of children born from a particular donor (a chance, some might say, for sexual selection to run out of control—those green-eyed geniuses can be mighty sought-after). Parents only find out that their child has dozens of half-siblings when they look up their ...

German Prostitutes Pay Streetwalking Fee at Parking Meter-Like Machine

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:59:21 +0000

Get yer streetwalking permit here!

From 8:15 pm to 6:00 am each day, prostitution is legal in Germany, where working call girls staff brothels, sauna clubs, and other such establishments. In the city of Bonn, which, uh, “boasts” around 200 prostitutes, an average of 20 freelancers go cruising each night, picking up clients on the street and heading to garage-like structures called “consummation areas” the city put up especially for that purpose. They’ve thought of everything, those Germans!

Girls in the various brothel-like establishments have always been subject to a prostitution tax, but streetwalkers, apparently, haven’t being paying. Now, though, the city has a way to make things fair for everyone: a parking meter for prostitutes.

The meter looks just like the sidewalk ticket-dispensers you’ve probably used in numerous cities to park your car, but for about $8.70, this one dispenses a pass allowing the holder to cruise for johns all night. When the city emptied one after the first night, it yielded a haul of $375, prompting various media outlets to comment on how honorable the city’s prostitutes must be. But one has to wonder how many people just bought a ticket for the novelty and ...

Kinky Skinks Show That Size Matters in Speciation

Veronique Greenwood — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:05:30 +0000

When a male’s bits don’t fit with a female’s bits, you wind up with reproductive malfunction. But shape isn’t everything, as a team of researchers recently discovered while watching hundreds of skink lizards court and spark.

Most studies looking at how genitalia mismatch contributes to new species take the concept literally: if the bits don’t fit together like lock and key, matings will be unsuccessful. And if the mismatch between the gear of two groups is bad enough, they will form separate reproductive populations, and, eventually, species. But the idea, which was first tossed around more than 150 years ago, has been discounted as a possible source of new species. Differently sized or shaped genitalia is such a big change that it’s likely to come after many other speciation triggers, like mutations or long separations between populations divided by mountain ranges.

But, as this research team points out—and as anyone in the dating pool can tell you—there are other aspects of physical incompatibility that can have an effect on sex, and thus could get speciation started. If the mating posture, chemical cues, or timing are off, even having matching genitalia doesn’t mean a mating will work ...

Bad News for Roosters: If You Aren’t King of the Henhouse, Your Ejaculate Will Be Ejected

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:23:05 +0000

WHAT? Noooooooo!

If you haven’t heard about the corkscrew kookiness that is duck genitalia by now, you need to check that stuff out ASAP.

Ducks’ twisting vaginas and telescoping penises are well-known part of an evolutionary arms race between the sexes that’s been going on for millennia, with each side trying to exert control over which males’ sperm fertilize the female’s eggs—a battle that, especially in birds, is fierce, occasionally violent, and weird as all-get-out. The most recently discovered example of what biologists deem “sexual conflict,” a little behavior hens have developed called sperm ejection, upholds that fine tradition.

Hens, like many female birds, don’t always have a lot of control over who mates with them. Roosters tend to resort to “sexual coercion,” aka rape, and so a female might have any number of sexual partners that she didn’t get to choose. What’s a hen to do? Well, according to a new study in The American Naturalist, evolve a method for getting rid of sperm from males she didn’t particularly like, thus making sure her offspring are of the best quality.

Scientists had already noticed that hens tended to squirt out semen after some acts ...

What Caused the Recent Explosion in the Number of Bisexual Men?

Joseph Castro — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:27:02 +0000

By now you’ve probably heard the recent news that male bisexuality is in fact real, in stark contrast with a 2005 study by some of the same scientists that claimed just the opposite. Bloggers and news outlets have unleashed a torrent of witty headlines and snarky remarks about the research, such as CBSNews’ “Study says bisexuality real, but bisexuals say ‘duh.’” Even the Gray Lady herself, The New York Times, got in on the fun with its quip, “No Surprise for Bisexual Men: Report Indicates They Exist.”

Presumably the studies aren’t picking up on a real increase in bisexuality over the past six years, so what’s the deal here—why the sudden change of heart for the Northwestern University researchers?

It all boils down to how the studies found their would-be bisexuals. In the 2005 study, the researchers recruited self-reported bisexuals from newspaper ads. “Last time, they got their guys from an ad in an urban newspaper read by a hipster crowd,” Allen Rosenthal, lead author of the new study, told Life’s Little Mysteries. The researchers chose their participants based on a questionnaire that rated the sexual desires of the men, and ...

Showy Male Birds—You Live Life Like a Candle in the Wind

Joseph Castro — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:59:19 +0000

For male Houbara bustards, extravagant sexual displays come with a price: rapid sexual aging. By studying over 1,700 North African Houbara bustards, researchers in France have learned that the birds, by age six, already begin producing smaller ejaculates with a large number of dead and abnormal sperm. The more showy the bustard, the quicker he burns himself out. As lead researcher Brian Preston said in a prepared statement:

This is the bird equivalent of the posers who strut their stuff in bars and nightclubs every weekend. If the bustard is anything to go by, these same guys will be reaching for their toupees sooner than they’d like.

[Read more about these peculiar birds and see a video of one of their seductive dances at the BBC.]

Image courtesy of Frank. Vassen / Flickr

Male Black Widow Spiders Try to Avoid Sex That Will Kill Them

Joseph Castro — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:17:16 +0000

Sometimes sex just isn’t worth your life.

For male black widow spiders, standing at just a quarter of the size of their mates, sex involves a very real danger: females of the species have no qualms about turning cannibalistic if they’re hungry after getting down and dirty. But it seems that it’s more than just a game of chance for horny male spiders. Researchers at Arizona State University have now learned that simply walking on the webs of female spiders can provide males with chemical cues telling them if their potential mates are ravenous enough to eat them.

In the study published in the journal Animal Behavior, researchers routinely fed one group of female spiders for several weeks while starving another group (noticeably shrinking their sizes). They then looked at the courtship behavior of the male spiders in a series of tests. In the first experiment, the researchers placed the males on the females’ webs while the cannibals were absent. Here, the males were far more likely to begin their courtship rituals on the webs of cricket-full females.

A male’s courtship dance, the researchers explained, lasts an hour or two and involves tapping different ...

Coming to a Dental School Near You: The Dental Robot With the Sex-Doll Face

Joseph Castro — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:09:30 +0000

Good news dental students: soon you will no longer have to approach your first victim patient with shaky, unsure hands. Researchers at Showa University in Japan have unveiled a new dental dummy, a realistic robot for dental students to practice on before taking the drill to real, human mouths.

I use the term “dummy” here loosely. Showa Tanako 2, as the researchers call her, has a wide range of human-like features. She can engage in simple conversations, flinch, roll her eyes, cough, and close her mouth like a real patient suffering from jaw fatigue. Oh, and she has a gag reflex.

So how did a group of dental researchers build such a realistic—albeit slightly scary—looking robot? Naturally, they sought help from Japanese sex doll maker, Orient Industry, who helped fashion the robot’s skin, tongue, and mouth. If the doll’s face didn’t look realistic, it wouldn’t “have the same effect on users psychologically,” Showa University professor Koutaro Maki said in the video released by DigInfo. “How doctors and students actually feel in the presence of a patient is a really big factor.”

On top of her movements, speech, and look, Showa Tanako 2 has one final similarity to human patients: she judges. ...

Where the Ladies At? There’s an App for That

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:12:21 +0000

Here’s a good use for augmented reality: directing clubgoers to the bars that have the best odds for meeting persons of their preferred gender. And how do you figure that out? Well, a start-up company called SceneTap is doing it with facial recognition.

Mounted at the doors of clubs, cameras will survey the crowd and, using facial recognition software, report the ratio of men to women to a free smartphone app. Forbes reports that 200 clubs, more than fifty of them in SceneTap’s home base of Chicago, have signed up to be included in the service, which will debut next month. The software is not sensitive enough to recognize individuals, stresses CEO Cole Harper—just sensitive enough to see whether that face coming in the door is male or female. The company plans to generate revenue from Groupon-like deals and advertising.

Now, when you get down to the privacy issues, it still seems a little problematic—a little Google Streetview Car—to us. Does the software store those images someplace? Could someone’s whereabouts be ascertained by a human looking at those files? But maybe we’re just paranoid. (If the kind of ladies you look for are on ...

Sexy Ad Campaign Targeting Monkeys Makes A Splash

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:21:17 +0000

“Advertising for monkeys” is just too good a phrase to pass up.

Even since ads created for a study investigating whether monkeys respond to billboards debuted at the Cannes Lions ad conference, the headlines have been flowing freely. We learn Yale primatologist Laurie Santos and two ad executives came up with the idea at last year’s TED, after Santos gave a talk on her experiments showing that monkeys that learn to use money are as irrational about it as we are.

Ad firm Proton has now developed two billboards to hang outside capuchin monkeys’ enclosures, and the researchers plan to see whether they will prefer one kind of food, or “brand,” over another when it is shown in close proximity to some titillating photos, including a “graphic shot” of a female monkey exposing her genitals and a shot of the troop’s alpha male with the food.

Once the monkeys have been exposed to the ads for brand A, scientists will see whether they show a preference for it over brand B, which won’t be supported with a campaign. In essence, they’ll investigate whether sex sells for monkeys. Brand A will be ...

The Better to Ignore You With: Female Frogs Deaf to Males’ Ultrasonic Calls

Joseph Castro — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:06:04 +0000

The concave-eared torrent frog.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hear each other over the low-frequency roar of jetliners and subway trains? For some rodents, bats, and marine mammals, environmental noise doesn’t normally pose a problem, as they can communicate at ultrasonic frequencies (greater than 20 kHz, just above our maximum hearing range). There are also a couple of amphibians that exhibit this trait, but in an odd twist, researchers have now learned that female concave-eared torrent frogs are deaf to the ultrasonic components of the males’ calls.

The concave-eared frog is a tree-loving native of the Huangshan Mountains in China. In choosing this woodsy area, the nocturnal amphibians must put up with one minor annoyance: streams that produce constant ambient noise. In 2006, Jun-Xian Shen, a biophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, and his research team discovered that the frogs get around this sonic clutter by adding ultrasonic frequencies to their normal calls (pdf). The frogs were the first non-mammalian vertebrate found to do this, and scientists have since learned that Borneo’s hole-in-the-head frogs (yes, that’s the actual name) also chirp in ultrasonic frequencies. After finding these ultrasonic noises, ...

“Mommy Tummy” Suit Gives Men a Chance to Feel Pregnant

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:22:07 +0000

For every expectant father who’s ever wished they, too, could feel a fetus kicking their bladder, science now has an answer. Researchers in Japan have put together a suit packed with balloons, sensors, and warm water so you can feel what it’s like to be pregnant.

The suit, called Mommy Tummy, mimics kicking with a system of 45 balloons that inflate and deflate, and movement sensors and accelerometers pick up on the wearer’s activities, so the “fetus,” represented by a four-liter bag of warm water, can respond to exercise or sudden movements with redoubled kicking. Vibrating actuators produce the illusion of wiggling, as New Scientist describes:

When two vibrating sources placed a distance apart move at the same time, it triggers a sensation in between the two points. So by varying vibrating pairs over time, the simulated fetus seems to squirm.

And, in a cool but somewhat unrealistic move, the scientists have hooked the suit up to a screen, so you can watch a simulation of the fetus’ response while you stroke your stomach or walk around. For the thrill-seekers out there, a 9-month pregnancy can be recapitulated in two minutes, or it can be spread out over a longer period for a ...

If Drug-Slathered, Erection-Enhancing Condoms Won’t Lead Men to Safe Sex, Nothing Will

Valerie Ross — Wed, 11 May 2011 20:13:06 +0000

For men who find that condoms sometimes, um, lessen their enthusiasm, some good news: Durex may soon be selling erection-enhacing condoms with a pharmaceutical boost.

The condoms, developed by UK biotech company Futura Medical, are lined with a gel that increases blood flow. The gel’s active ingredient, glyceryl nitrate, has been used for as a vasodilator for over a century. The tricky part was getting the gel to stay in the condom without degrading the latex, but the company found a way (and quickly paten ted it).

Men who enrolled in the clinical trial took the condoms home and gave them a test run (the things we do for science!). Both they and their partners reported longer, larger, and harder erections, presumably while grinning.

The condoms are now being reviewed by European regulators, and if approved, they could be on shelves there later this year. The product is meant specifically for men who have trouble maintaining an erection while wearing a condom, but there’s no prescription required, so anyone will be able to pick up a box from the nearest drug store. No such luck for American consumers, who will be ...

Everything You Wanted to Know About Semen-Collecting Robots (and Then Some)

Patrick Morgan — Mon, 09 May 2011 18:58:55 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tJk1dVIfw&feature=related

Ever since last month’s China International Medical Equipment Fair in Shenzhen, China, a curious video (above) has been spreading across the blogosphere. The gadget in question is apparently an automatic sperm collector, an all-in-one machine into which men can donate sperm (hands-free). The video treats the entire subject in a rather ridiculous manner, raising two questions: How does this gadget actually work? And does anyone actually use them?

Today, there are in fact several companies selling automatic sperm collectors on the internet (here, here, and here, for example). Your average sperm-collecting gadget consists of a kiosk with a monitor that provides stimulating visuals (!), complimented by sounds (!!). A little lower is a “semen-collection sheath,” which purportedly simulates the feel and movement of a vagina.On top of visual stimuli, another company says that their gadget uses “infrared heating to simulate the temperature of female vagina [sic],” which consists of two inflatable tire-like structures. Once enveloping a penis, the sheath continues vibrating until the man, er… successfully donates his sperm.

The robotic sperm collector apparently has a “high success rate of 95%.” (I’ll leave it at that.) And it’s touted ...

I Like Your Ring Finger. Let’s Mate!

Patrick Morgan — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:59:10 +0000

When it comes to sexual attraction, it turns out that men might better be concerned with the length of their fourth (or ring) fingers than the length of anything else. Researchers have discovered that women tend to be more attracted to men whose ring fingers are longer than their index fingers.

We’ve known for a while that the length ratio between the second and fourth fingers of a man may indicate how much testosterone he was exposed to in the womb, with longer ring fingers indicating more testosterone exposure. And many researchers have taken this finding to new levels, including a study from last December that revealed that the risk of prostate cancer drops by a third in men with longer index fingers.

In the present study, “the aim was to understand what make a man attractive,” and whether these characteristics “were in part conditioned by the foetal environment,” University of Geneva, Switzerland, researcher Camille Ferdenzi told COSMOS. Men with higher testosterone tend to have deeper voices, more symmetrical faces, and a distinct body odor. And so with this in mind, Ferdenzi had 80 university women between 18 and ...

Catchiest Mating Songs Spread Through Whale Populations Like Top 40 Hits

Veronique Greenwood — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:55:22 +0000

All the single ladies, all the single ladies…

Whales catch earworms, too, show scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia in a new study. Each breeding season, males start out singing a new tune, which might incorporate bits of golden oldies or be entirely fresh. These new songs are then passed from whale to whale for 4,000 miles, usually starting from the western edge of the Pacific near Australia, a veritable humpback metropolis, to French Polynesia in the east, a comparative hinterland: a possible cetacean case of cultural trends starting in the big city and propagating to the country. Another hypothesis from the Hairpin:

What if Michael Jackson was reincarnated as a whale and is now living off the coast of eastern Australia?

This MJ-style spread of songs is cultural transmission on a massive scale, a scale that hasn’t been seen beyond humans before. Over the course of 11 years, researchers saw (or rather, heard) these songs ripple across six whale populations and thousands of miles of ocean. One song even turned up in the Atlantic. There are several possibilities as to how, points out Wired Science: “The songs could be carried by ...

What the Duck? Lady Mallards May Get Down With Bright-Billed Drakes to Avoid STDs

Patrick Morgan — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:57:54 +0000

When it comes to mallard bills, brighter is better: A bright yellow bill is duck-speak for “I’m healthy,” attracting more female ducks than dingy green ones. After discovering that avian semen has antibacterial properties, scientists then found that the semen of brighter-billed males killed more bacteria than the semen of darker-billed ones. It implies that by seeking out bright-billed males, female ducks are protecting themselves against bacteria-related sexually transmitted diseases.

In her experiment, University of Oslo researcher Melissah Rowe collected semen from ducks (a feat unto itself—the videos in this link are amazing, but watch at your own risk) of various bill colors, and then tested how well the semen killed bacteria such as E. coli. She found that ducks whose bills had more carotenoids—an organic pigment that brightens bills—also had semen that more effectively killed E. coli. However, they discovered that the semen’s effectiveness against the bacteria S. aureus wasn’t associated with bill color, possibly implying that this bacteria doesn’t pose much harm to ducks.

Although they’re not sure how much E. coli affects ducks, the scientists know that this bacteria can harm the quality of ...

The Measure of a Man’s Private Parts Is Connected to His Fertility

Patrick Morgan — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:11:28 +0000

When it comes to male fertility, length matters—the length between the scrotum and anus, that is. New research suggests that measuring a man’s “anogenital distance,” or AGD, is a fast, low-tech, relatively accurate method of getting an idea of the quality of a man’s sperm.

In a new study, University of Rochester professor Shanna Swan and her colleagues broke out the measuring tape and assessed the anus-to-scrotum distance of 126 men born in 1988 or later. The men whose AGD’s were shorter than the average of two inches were 7.3 times more likely to have low sperm counts than their more well-endowed…er, well-distanced, brethren. These men with shorter AGD’s also had low sperm motility and poor sperm morphology.

So why on Earth, you’re wondering, would this be the case?

As DISCOVER said in the 2008 article The Dirty Truth About Plastics, “Biologists recognize a reduction in the length between the anus and the sex organ as an external marker of feminization, easily measured because it is typically twice as long in males as in females.” This reduction in AGD “may be caused by exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals” in the womb; Swan’s previous ...

What Every Lonely Guy Needs: A Fake Facebook Girlfriend

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:25:34 +0000

Some guys only dream of having a Facebook girlfriend; others are willing to pay a company to create one for them. Soon, lonely dudes with extra cash may feel better about themselves as they interact with a “virtual girlfriend,” convincing their friends that they actually are dating material.

A startup called Cloud Girlfriend plans to provide a service that would post messages on your Facebook wall from a virtual girlfriend (or what they call your “social network girlfriend”). The process is simple: “Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network. Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl.”

Currently the website only allows visitors to provide their emails in order to know when the service actually launches. According to Technology Review’s Christopher Mims, despite having not even started yet, “it’s already experiencing overwhelming demand.”

So what are the benefits of having a virtual girlfriend? According to company co-founder David Fuhriman, having a fake girlfriend may help men get a real one: Women seeing that at least one other woman likes this guy ...

Sex Increases Risk of Heart Attack by 2.7X—Significantly Less Than Its Fun Multiplier

Patrick Morgan — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:39:35 +0000

There are certain things you’re not supposed to do during sex and having a heart attack is one of them. We’ve known for a while that bursts of moderate to intense physical activity—including sex—increase heart attack risk, but a few scientists have now put number on that risk. And especially for out-of-shape folks, the diagnosis doesn’t look good (unless you’re aiming for death by sex, of course).

Studying death and sex is a tricky subject: Scientists can’t just round up volunteers, watch them make love, and then note which ones die. So instead they analyzed data from 14 different studies to single out connections between sex, exercise, and the risk of cardiac death or heart attacks.

As the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Acute cardiac events were significantly associated with … sexual activity.” When exercising, you’re 3.5 times more likely to get a heart attack, and when having sex (or immediately after sex), you’re 2.7 times more likely.

The main take-home message is not that you should give up sex, but that you should get more regular exercise. That’s because they also discovered that your likelihood of ...

Vets-in-Training Plunge Their Hands Into Rectal Simulators to Learn Their Craft

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:46:17 +0000

When you have your hand up a cow’s behind for the first time, you’re literally groping in the dark. Unable to see what you’re touching and armed with only textbook knowledge of cow anatomy, it’s easy to make a wrong move, which in your first rectal class can mean misdiagnosing a cow pregnancy or not even feeling your first uterus. That’s all changed with the advent of rectal simulators.

Dubbed Breed’n Betsy, this metal-framed simulator with a latex back-end and internal organs allows students to perfect their pregnancy-testing, artificial-insemination, and embryo-transferring techniques before they touch a living cow. After you put on your lubricated glove, you just plunge your hand into the cow and feel around to learn the positions of latex uteri, ovaries, and cervixes. There are also upgrades: A water-filled acrylic tube simulates real-cow temperatures, and you can switch out the latex organs for real ones from your local slaughterhouse (oh goodie!). So after you’ve grown comfortable performing rectal exams on this Frankensteinian mishmash of organs, you can confidently do the same to a living, breathing bovine.

England’s Bristol University snatched up two Breed’n Betsy models—replacing six living cows per ...

Scientists Say: Let’s Cure Erectile Dysfunction With Spider Venom!

Patrick Morgan — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:10:43 +0000

Spiders and penises are two things most people want to keep far, far apart. Until now. New research suggests that the venom of one aggressive arachnid could be used in future treatments for erectile dysfunction (that is, if it doesn’t kill you first).

Say hello to the Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), also known as the armed spider, or as the banana spider. With an over four-inch leg span, this South and Central American native normally creeps around banana plantations, although some have wound up in American supermarkets and Canadian grocery stores. Flaccid fellows beware: On top of severe pain, a single bite from this eight-legged foe can cause you to lose control of your muscles—and if it’s not treated, the bite can screw up your ability to breathe so much so that you slowly die of oxygen deprivation.With a sip of the anti-venom, though, you’d recover in a week. And truth be told, only 10 people out of 7,000 are known to have actually died from a bite. Survivors tell of experiencing painful erections that last for more than four hours—a medical ailment known as priapism.

It’s this ...

The Genetic Gamesmanship of a Seven-Sexed Creature

Patrick Morgan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:40:34 +0000

What could be better than two types of sexes? For one organism, the answer isn’t three, but seven! And to top it off, these seven sexes aren’t evenly distributed in a population, although researchers have now developed a mathematical model that can accurately estimate the probabilities in this crap-shoot game of sexual determination.

Meet Tetrahymena thermophila, which in addition to its seven different sexes—conveniently named I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII—has such a complex sex life that it requires an extra nucleus. This fuzzy, single-celled critter has a larger macronucleus that takes care of most cellular functions and a smaller micronucleus dedicated to genetic conjugation.

The other odd thing about this one-celled wonder is that the population of the seven sexes are skewed, leading Unversity of Houston researcher Rebecca Zufall and her colleagues to ask: What gives?

To answer that question, they created mathematical models of T. thermophila populations, and discovered that different versions of the same gene, or alleles, gave advantages to different sexes. Unlike humans, in which an individual’s sex is fully determined by its genes, the genotypes of these creatures provide only probabilities of developing ...

For Fruit Flies, There’s Such a Thing as “Too Sexy”

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:02:01 +0000

Beauty doesn’t only fade within a lifetime–it also fades genetically over the course of several generations, according to new research. Scientists studying populations of sexually attractive male fruit flies have found that there’s a limit to their evolutionary success–and that there may actually be a disadvantage to being too sexy.

For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers genetically modified male fruit flies, causing them to give off excessive amounts of attractive pheromones. The scientists then introduced a flock of these foxy fellows to a normal fruit fly population. They discovered that the female flies mated with these modified flies more often initially, and the proportion of super-sexy males increased for a while–but the proportions returned to normal after seven generations.

As The New York Times reports:

“Even though we were able to make males more attractive, there must have been a fitness cost,” said Katrina McGuigan, a biologist at the University of Queensland and one of the study’s authors. “While sexual selection is really powerful, there are consequences to nonsexual traits.”

It’s not yet clear what genetic disadvantage these fruit fly ladykillers ...

A Big-Bearded Bustard Is a Lucky Bustard

Sarah Stanley — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:12:36 +0000

If you want to impress a female great bustard, going clean-shaven is probably the wrong approach. According to biologist Juan Carlos Alonso and colleagues at the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences, the size of a male bustard’s “whiskers and beard” is correlated with its reproductive success.

The great bustard is a beloved but endangered bird found in Spain and other locations scattered across Eurasia. Males of the species are possibly the heaviest flying birds in the world (rivaled only by the male kori bustard), and each sports whisker-like plumage on either side of its beak, along with neck feathers that resemble a beard. They also engage in showy mating displays, strutting about “like a vicar in a tutu,” according to naturalist Chris Packham in this BBC video.

According to the press release, it was unclear until now what purpose was served by the male bustard’s flamboyant facial plumage. Using transmitters to gather information on wild bustards’ beards over the course of ten years, Alonso and colleagues found that the plumes are related to bustard weight and age, and could communicate information on these stats to fellow bustards.

That information ...

Sneezy After Sex? You Could Have Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome

Patrick Morgan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:00:10 +0000

If you experience feverish, burning-eyed orgasms, don’t rejoice–you should probably consider visiting your doctor. Scientists believe such flu-like symptoms arise when men are allergic to their own semen.

It’s called post orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS). Although the term has been around since 2002, researchers led by Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, have for the first time shown that some men suffer from a semen allergy. Such men, after ejaculating, not only have burning eyes and fever-like feelings that can last for a week, but also feel as tired as post-marathon runners and have noses that run faster than Usain Bolt.

In one study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine this week, the researchers pricked the skin of 33 POIS-diagnosed men with their own diluted semen, and discovered that nearly 90 percent of them had allergic reactions as a result. As Reuters reports:

“These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome,” Waldinger said in a telephone interview. He said the findings “contradict the idea that the complaints have a ...

Gorgeous Guts: Pretty Photos of Fly Intestines Reveal Digestive Secrets

Sarah Stanley — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:58:35 +0000

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