Scientists have just concluded a study in which they proved that chopping off a bug’s penis makes reproduction more difficult. I think I speak for anyone with a penis when I say: duh. Also, the sky is blue, and grass is green, and boobs are good, and you’ll never win the lottery, and nobody knows why NYC cab drivers are always talking on their bluetooth so stop asking me.
Before we get to the actual study, just let it sink in for a minute that scientists received funding to chop off various lengths of penises to test how it would affect reproduction.
So why was the study undertaken if they were out to prove the obvious? Well, the bug in question is not too dissimilar from myself, in that it’s dong measure two-thirds the length of its body.
Phsyorg covered the study in depth:
Lopping off sections of a penis, for most species would involve serious injury and trauma (for some the mere thought of it might be enough)—but not so, apparently, for L. simulans. The males of these little bugs, which are typically just 11 millimeters or so in length, come equipped with a penis that is very nearly comical in its length, on average 7 mm, which for those keeping track, is in the neighborhood of two thirds of its body length (it drags the thing around beneath itself). Even more odd is that most of the penis, aka its intromittent organ, is bereft of nerves, muscles or even blood vessels. And even odder than that is the fact that the female organ into which the male places its appendage is much too short to accommodate such length. Thus, the researchers sought out to discover the reason for such a mismatch.
To find out if the male could survive and mate if its penis was cut shorter, the team took scissors in hand and set to work snipping off differing lengths from a host of “volunteers.” They then watched to see how well the bugs copulated and then measured their reproductive success. As it turned out, the shortened organs did not appear to cause undue hardship to the male, or the females for that matter. The bugs copulated as normal—it was only when counting offspring that a change was noted. The more they cut off, the less reproductively successful the males were. Cutting off 5 percent of the penis, for example, resulted in a big drop-off, and cutting off thirty percent cut both the rate of copulation and the rate of insemination.
So the more penis they chopped off the less likely the bug was to conceive. This just might be the most brilliant scientific study of our lifetimes, mainly because the scientists involved were able to convince someone to give them money so they could chop off bug dicks and see if they still worked. I’d chop some bug dick to read the proposal, and be a fly on the wall when that group of researchers submitted the study proposal to their bosses.
……..So you want money to chop off bug dicks and see if they still work?………..Yes, yes that’s exactly what we’re looking for.
Have to admit I was pretty happy to bust out the ‘Penis Stuff‘ tag again…as weird as that sounds.
Click on over to Wired or Physorg to read summaries of the study, or click here to read the study in full via PDF.