It’s hard enough for us humans to fight for a mate. But for the now-extinct mussel-like creatures known as ostracods, which lived on Earth about 100 million years ago, “getting in” was only part of the battle.
That’s where giant sperm comes in: Females copulated with multiple males, so it was up for the sperm themselves to duke it out inside of the female’s body. New research based on microfossils of these ancient creatures, led by Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz in Munich, shows that a male’s sperm may have been even larger than the animal itself. And ostracods aren’t the only animals to produce mega-sperm, according to Reuters:
Giant sperm are still around today. A human sperm, for example, would have to be 40 meters long to measure up against a fruit fly’s. The insect is only a few millimeters in size but can produce 6 cm-long (2.5 inch) coiled sperm.
Now that’s impressive.
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Image: flickr / notsogoodphotography
Despite the fact that they were born at the same time to the same mother, Justin and Jordan look nothing like twins, besides having the same skin color. In fact, they look so different that James Harrison, the supposed father, decided to request a paternity test. Turns out, his instincts were right: One of the infants is his child, and the other is not.
Mia Washington, the mother of the “twins,” admitted to cheating on Harrison, her fiancé, prior to becoming pregnant. But she didn’t have any idea the pregnancy was a result of two separate sets of sperm.
Biologically speaking, this can happen when two or more eggs from the same woman are fertilized during the same ovulation period by two different men. When this rare event occurs, it is called heteropaternal superfecundation—and we really mean rare: There have only been about 10 other cases of this, according to the president of Clear Diagnostics’ DNA lab, Genny Thibodeaux. And in those cases, it was more obvious because the children were of different ethnic backgrounds.
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A recent survey of the animal kingdom has found that, like humans, animals just wanna have fun.
To anyone who’s ever spent time with a dog, it may seem obvious that animals can enjoy play for the sake of it—though this hasn’t been so well documented in the scientific realm. Jonathan Balcombe, a research scientist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has now gathered a list of ways that animals get pointless pleasure, and published it in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science. A few examples:
- Herring gulls play “drop-catch,” tossing around clams and other small, hard objects.
- Hippos go to the spa. When a hippo wants to unwind at the freshwater springs, they relax with their legs spread out and mouth wide open, and let the surrounding fish suck off parasites, flaky skin, fungus, and other blemishes. Sometimes they get so relaxed that they fall asleep.
- Dolphins use vibrators. They’ve been caught making low-pitched buzzing clicks near each others’ private areas, and researchers say it seems to be an enjoyable experience.
- Certain birds have been caught masturbating, while goats, hyenas, primates, bats, and sheep appear to engage in oral sex.
In order to have fun, animals must have a brain that can process the pleasure. Some aren’t so lucky: Sponges and jellyfish aren’t conscious enough to really know what fun is.
If you’re too far away from your honey to exchange real kisses, you may soon be able to kiss him or her over the phone, using the—you guessed it—KissPhone.
You actually kiss the phone—on its big, pink lips, to be precise—and the pressure, temperature, percussion speed, and “sucking force” of your mouth are measured. The phone then transmits these signals to your partner’s KissPhone, which reproduces the conditions of the kiss.
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Jerry Coyne—author and renowned evolutionist—thinks so:
It is the conventional wisdom in human sexuality that semen tastes bad. Anyone with minimal sexual experience knows that although many women will perform fellatio on their partners, most bridle at the thought of swallowing the ejaculate. Its flavor is frequently characterized as revoltingly bitter or salty. The “swallow or spit” dilemma faces any woman who performs such an act, and whose partner regards swallowing as a gesture of love…
Why does semen taste so foul? One answer, of course, is that the chemicals necessary to make an ejaculate effective have the side effect of tasting bad. Semen is only about 5% sperm, with the remainder of the fluid consisting of a complex mixture of compounds from the prostate gland and seminal vesicle…
But this proximate answer will not satisfy the diligent evolutionary psychologist. After all, natural selection could presumably add some sugars or good-tasting stuff to semen if it were advantageous to do so. Why does it not do so?
A moment’s reflection gives the answer.
Natural selection maintains the repugnant taste of semen so that a man’s sperm will wind up in the appropriate place: the vagina and not the stomach. So long as sperm tastes bad, women will not be tempted to swallow it, but will turn their male partner towards conventional intercourse, which of course is the only act that will produce children.
Well, there you have it! Now all we need is a way to test this hypothesis. Volunteers?
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Image: iStockphoto [not actual semen]
Oxytocin is the brain’s love hormone—without it, we might not ever fall in love or attempt monogamy. We know that the hormone releases “happy” feelings during events from nursing to orgasm, and is the reason why people feel a chemical “bond” with a partner. And now, scientists have found that the hormone can also boost the sex appeal of complete strangers.
A University of Bristol study tested 96 men and women in a double-blind test by spraying them with either oxytocin or a plecebo. The subjects were then asked to rate pictures of 48 men and women for attractiveness, and 30 for trustworthiness. Sure enough, the participants that had sniffed the love hormone tended to rate the random people in the pictures as better looking or more trustworthy.
Psychologist Angeliki Theodoriduou, who led the study, found that regardless of their gender or mood, the people under the influence of oxytocin were more likely to like the strangers in the pictures.
While the researchers didn’t look at why oxytocin has such pull, they reckon the hormone’s effect on the brain is so strong that it suppresses any fearful emotions people would normally feel.
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Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer is married to the Berlin Wall. Like any couple, they’ve had their ups and downs, but over the years, they’ve been able to meet each other’s spiritual and emotional needs. “We even made it through the terrible disaster of 9 November 1989, when my husband was subjected to frenzied attacks by a mob. But we are still as much in love as the day we met,” Berliner-Mauer said last year.
Berliner-Mauer (the German name for the Berlin Wall, which she has taken as her last name) has since defined her love under the term “objectum sexual,” or OS—in other words, a person who falls in love with inanimate objects. As an animist, she, along with a growing group of others, believe that inanimate objects are sentient, intelligent beings.
Take Erika Eiffel, who is married to the Eiffel Tower. Eiffel says she recalls being attracted to objects even as a child, and realized she was different only when she saw other people at school dating each other, while she was dating a bridge.
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We know that sex typically lasts anywhere from 3 to 13 minutes—though it can be as short as a few seconds. About 40 percent of men suffer from premature ejaculation at some point in their lives—and the usual treatment for it involves counseling and anti-depressants. European researchers at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast developed a spray to treat the problem directly—and they’ve achieved stunning results. Men who used the spray could perform six times longer, upping their time in bed from mere seconds to as long as four minutes.
The love potion is a topical anesthetic called PSD502, made of 7.5 milligrams of lidocaine and 2.5 mg of prilocaine. By “reducing the heightened sensitivity of the glands penis with topical anesthetics,” the drug improves performance time without affecting the “sensation of ejaculation.”
To test it, the researchers recruited 300 men who had a history of lasting only a minute (or less) in bed.
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We blame genes for obesity, mental illness, and a host of other issues. But can they determine when we lose our virginity? Researchers are now saying yes, they can—or, at least, that’s what media reports are saying researchers are saying.
Here’s the real deal: According to a study out of California State University, our genes may play a (minor, debated) role in the age at which people first have sex.
CSU psychologist Nancy Segal looked at 48 pairs of twins who were separated at birth to see how genes influenced their sexual maturity. To compare the twins’ sexual histories, Segal had each of them take a “sexual life history interview” composed of a “sexual meaning survey, a sexual life history timeline, and a sexual behavior questionnaire.” The researchers found that most twins lost their virginity at around 19 years of age. New Scientist calls the findings “modest” at best—the genes “explain a third of the differences in the participant’s age of first intercourse.”
Of course, despite screaming headlines to the contrary, exactly how genes are linked to the loss of virginity is still thoroughly “speculative,” as Segal told DISCOVER. Other groups have pinpointed a gene—DRD4— that has been linked to age of loss of virginity.
Given all the hoopla, it’s worth asking, are these studies really linking genes and virginity at all? DRD4 is known as the “risk taking” gene? People who are risk takers also abuse alcohol and drugs or engage in delinquent behavior—virginity is only one risk-taking measure, and an arguable one at that.
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•Plants can twitter, but it seems celebrities can’t—not on their own, anyway.
• Toxic sofas, after being shipped from China with packets of a harmful mold-inhibitor, caused extreme skin rashes and burns on at least 1,600—and possibly tens of thousands not yet identified—people in England.
• Science education is under assault in Texas.
• In another move of, weirdly, putting animals on birth control, China is putting gerbils on the pill.
• Daddy long-legs are threatened by climate change, a gorilla suffered a seizure and was given an MRI, and a campaign helps endangered species by enlisting clothing brands to save their namesakes: Lacoste to the crocodiles’ rescue!
• Also, we’re doomed.
