reproduction
pharyngula | March 12, 2006Shame on you, South Dakota. Watch this clip of SD's abortion politics; on the one hand, you have to respect people who have been providing abortion services to the state for years, like Dr Miriam McCreary (now criminalized), and the few representatives, like Elaine Roberts, who have opposed the law, but you also have to see that sexist asshat, Bill Napoli, ramble on about how he might make exceptions for religious virgins who had been brutally raped.
He's probably going to get reelected, when in a just world he ought to be embarrassed to be seen in public without a bag over his head.
I hadn't…
pharyngula | March 9, 2006
Remember Snuppy, the cloned puppy? He's been living under a cloud for a while now, since one of his creators was Woo-Suk Hwang, the Korean scientist who was found to have faked data and exploited his workers, and there was concern that perhaps the dog cloning experiment was also tainted.
Put those fears to rest. Two groups of researchers have independently analyzed Snuppy and its putative clone parent, and both agree that it is most likely a clone. The nuclear markers between the two were identical, while mitochondrial markers were different—exactly what you'd expect in this kind of clone,…
pharyngula | March 7, 2006I was just thinking there was something especially weird about that Wilkow rant against abortion. He's asked whether life begins at conception, and he replies with an irksomely stupid question of his own: "…scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created?" The caller who asked the question is stumped and avoids it, unfortunately, but it's an interestingly bad reply.
I was a bit baffled by it at first myself, until I realized what Wilkow is hoping for: that the person would answer "no", and then he could triumphantly declare that therefore he was…
pharyngula | March 2, 2006Never mind me, I'm running around with classes and meetings today…here are a few quick links.
The 29th Skeptics' Circle.
The Tildification of Norwegianity.
The Terry Writing Challenge—there's real money involved.
An in-depth interview with PZ Myers.
I and the Bird.
Intelligent Design subverts itself.
An example of the research promise of ID.
Don't trust the NIH.
The Carnival of the Liberals.
pharyngula | March 2, 2006
I've been savoring this lovely used book I picked up a little while ago, The Book of Spiders and Scorpions by Rod Preston-Mafham, and am appreciating more than the fact that it is full of beautiful photography of spiders and lots of general information on arachnid behavior and physiology; it's also true that spiders are awfully sexy beasts. They are playful and romantic and kinky and enthusiastic and ferocious and savage and exotic, and really know how to have a good time. I thought I'd share a few of the pretty pictures and details of the arachnid sex life with the readers of Pharyngula—so…
pharyngula | February 25, 2006Just a thought…but you know, my town isn't far from the South Dakota border, and there really isn't that much difference between my neighborhood and that of some small South Dakota town 50 miles away. I think the piggish prigs who are pushing the legislation to criminalize abortion are contemptible, but does that mean we people of the progressive state of Minnesota are any better? That got me wondering—I'm a fully entitled, blissfully unaware, card-carrying member of the Patriarchy, after all, so I've never had to consider what it would be like to be female, 17, and worried that I might be…
pharyngula | February 22, 2006Ah, the life of the female giant Australian cuttlefish…males fight for her affections, and during the mating season she will have sex with 2-8 different males each day, with an average total of 17 copulations per day. She can be picky, too, and rejects most of the mating attempts (yet still manages to mate up to 40 times a day). It must be a good life.
Males have a rougher time of it, I would think. There are many more males than females, and so it's a struggle to get access to one; the bigger, stronger males will guard females, acting as a consort, and use aggressive displays to chase off…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006As part of the ongoing migration to the new site, I've brought over some strangely popular articles: Tentacle sex, Tentacle sex, part deux, Squid nuptial dances, and Octopus sex. All across the world, people are wondering what the etiquette is if they should find themselves in a romantic situation with an amorous cephalopod, and it is my duty to provide the answers.
If only I'd thought of bringing these over last week, in time for Valentine's Day. I hope no one made any beastly gaffes because they couldn't find these articles in time…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006
I rather like this illustration I ran across in some reading. It's a bit risqué, and reminded me of some ukiyo-e…the kind of thing you don't usually expect to find in a biology journal.
This line drawing was made from a photograph of a male H. lunulata (shaded) copulating with a female. The arrow points to the male's hectocotylus, which is being inserted into the female's mantle cavity.
This site gets a lot of hits in searches for tentacle sex, and I'm going to distract a lot of slavering otaku once again by talking about the real thing. Not the fantasies of Hokusai,
Teraoka, or
Saeki (…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006
When male squid get together with their female friends, they have a couple of nuptial options: they can go ahead and use their charm to court the female, or they can just start poking her with tentacles full of sperm in mating frenzy. Now some of you guys might be thinking the latter option sounds good (what's the point of living the life of a squid if you can't be selfish and uninhibited, right?), while the ladies and gentlemen here might think the former is better. A study of the mating behavior of squid close-up and in the lab suggests that it's true: taking one's time and mating…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006
Yesterday's [21 November 2005] post about squid had a most unsatisfying conclusion, so I feel compelled to mention two things: squidblog has a brief explanation of squid jet propulsion, and I've dug up another older paper on squid movement. Even better, it's about squid nuptial dances and mating.
Here, see? Pretty squid post coitus planting a string of fertilized eggs on the sea floor.
Photo of a large male escorting a female squid (Loligo vulgaris reynaudii) as she attaches an "egg finger" of about 100 eggs to an egg bed.
This work was motivated by growing demand in the South African squid…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006
Doesn't everyone just love cephalopods? I find them to be a fascinating example of a body plan radically different from our own, the closest thing to a truly alien large metazoan on our planet. I try to keep my eyes open for new papers on cephalopod development, but unfortunately, they are rather difficult to study and data is sadly thin and tantalizing.
I just ran across a pair of papers by Jantzen and Havenhand (2003a, b) on squid mating. That's close enough to development for me!
First, let me explain a few general features of squid sex. Males produce elaborate spermatophores,…
pharyngula | February 4, 2006If you haven't heard enough about human-animal hybrids, I'm interviewed in BellaOnline.
pharyngula | February 3, 2006I simply do not understand some people's attitudes towards sex. I'm a fairly conservative guy in that department, I thought, happily involved in a long term and conventional relationship, but these stories I'm hearing about the new breed of American puritanism are simply incomprehensible to me. This Kansas law to criminalize consensual amorous activities between teenagers sounds so freakily Talibanish to me.
While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline's…