Tis the Season

Sexy

This week's cover of The New Yorker is really sexy. "No Trespassing," by Istvan Banyai.

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Weekly S(ex)cience Times Update

This week in Science, a Nebraskan female bonnethead shark has given a virgin birth. This is the shark-christ-child, in photographic form.

Science Times: NYT's Excuse for Raunch?

I have become convinced that the New York Times Science section, featured on Tuesdays, is the paper's outlet for all-out raunchiness, albeit generally of the animal variety.

From yesterday's "A Lonesome Tortoise, and a Search for a Mate":

By coating her hands in the genital secretions of female tortoises and gently stroking him, she managed to demonstrate a couple of times (in the course of several months’ work) that George was capable of an erection. But whereas her touch could induce other male tortoises to reach orgasm within a few minutes, with George she never managed to collect any sperm...

Dr. Nicholls even raises the possibility of showing instructive videos to George — and if tortoise porn is what it takes, I say go for it.

This is merely the latest in a series of articles (see also duck phalli, chimeric marmosets) in which the Times uses cute, flippant, yet decidedly campy high-brow going low-brow language to describe scientists getting all sexy.

the tentacled duck phallus/the spiraled oviduct, or "you need a garage to park the car"

gotta love the science times:

“This guy’s the champion,” said Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, leaning over the nether regions of a duck — a Meller’s duck from Madagascar, to be specific — and carefully coaxing out his phallus.

The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.


“So what does the female look like?” she said. “Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.”

Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it.