The Future of Love. was Re: [extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change, biology, last post, post, etc.

[Amara Graps]

spike
>Penis fencing?  What is that Avant?

 From my Stranger than Fiction Page

http://www.amara.com/stranger/str_fiction.html

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What Would Darwin Say ..?

Austrailia's Great Barrier Reef:

The flatworm Pseudoceros bifurcus is no romantic. When it wants sex,
it simply rears up and stabs its mate with its penis. Because it a
hermaphroditic species, its mate has a penis too, so it may get a jab
in return. This leads to an unusual foreplay ritual that its
discoverers in Germany have dubbed penis fencing.

Nicolaas Michiels and Leslie Newman of the Max Planck Institute for
Behavioural Physiology in Seewiesen stumbled upon the 6-centimeter
worm in the sea off Heron Island at the southern end of Austrailia's
Great Barrier Reef. For 20 hours they observed 16 pairs of worms,
which they had housed in ice-cream tubs.

At first, the animals were unable to find each other and did nothing.
But when the worms happened to meet, they started sexual fencing bouts
that lasted up to an hour. The two animals would sit up and try to
inject sperm into each other. Only about one out of six strikes leads
to successful insemination, says Michiels, who calls the behavior
"brutally inefficient." The animals are left severely wounded, with
prominent punctures.


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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"My, this game does teach new words!" --Hobbes