how to have animalistic sex.

Sperm shooting. A common sport enjoyed by many a deep sea squid.

But not really. I can, however, imagine that an entry title like that would get me more hits in a Google search. I recently read about the secret spawning of eels in the National Georgraphic and I think, that since then, I have become obsessed with finding out more about the sex lives of other animals.

1. The more attractive the fish, the worse the sex.
A study recently came out suggesting that less attractive tropical guppies have better sperm. Guppies undergo non consensual (or as I prefer to call it, "sneak mating") and courtship mating and the bitchin' sheilas is the tank frequently undergo sexual relations with many different males. The study noted that less ornate and less colourful fish (which were frequent sneak maters though in all honesty, this term sounds like a euphemism for tank RAPIST) compensated for their less than average looks by producing sperm which swam quicker and had a greater rate of fertilisation. In such a way, the "ugly" fish became fierce sexual competitors by compensating for their lacklustre fins and asymmetrical slithery bodies by producing sperm more likely of producing healthy offspring. A form of natural selection, if you will. I find it odd to imagine how the researchers went about choosing the "attractive" fish from the "ugly" ones. I imagine four men in white coats and beards standing over a tank and arguing about the sex appeal of a certain guppie. To use a criterium that stipulated that "colourful" subjects were more "attractive" would be considered racist in a human study. Do the results of this study crossover into human relations also? Do repeat sex offenders also have more fertile sperm?

Which guppie is most attractive? Don't look at colour you flippin' racist.

2. Cricket stumps gorilla.
I was taught in Human Biology 101 that the gorilla had the biggest relative testicle size within the primates. Recently, it's been found that the bush cricket has won the animal title with its ball sack equating to a whopping 14% of its body weight. A glorious feat, indeed. Bigger testicle size, doesn't necessarily mean more sperm, but like the gorilla, it does correlate with monogamous relations. It takes balls to sleep with many women, repeatedly.

3. How deep does the deep sea squid go?

67 cm, apparently. Some fishing boat recently captured a deep sea squid with an erect doodle that was almost as long as its entire body. Why the poor thing was erect, I really don't know. This one specimen taught researchers a bit about cephalospod mating. It is suggested that perhaps cephalospods living in deeper regions in the world's seas need longer penises and might shoot out 'sperm packets' which fertilse females. Maybe this is how the giant squid mates. Shallow cephalopods actually have a short penis and a special 'arm' which transfers these packages into the female. But there aren't many deep sea squids so I guess you gotta take whatever comes atchya and a giant penis is always a plus. I wonder what speeds these 'sperm packets' reach. Alas, I have tried to find an answer but have come across none.

4. Another example of how humans screw up the world.
I read recently about how toxins in the water, most notably, tributyltin, an anti-fouling paint used on the bottoms of ships/boats, can lead to the pathological condition known as imposex in which organisms develop organs of the opposite sex. In one study, the researchers proposed that TBT acts as a neurotoxin which triggers the abnormal secretion of Penis Morphogenic Factor and the development of a penis in female sea molluscs causes quite a lot of problems. No penis envy here! The growth of a penis like organ in female dog whelks (sea snails) can block the fallopian tuube and cause sterirlity. Even after the TBT ban, imposex is still prevalent because low concentrations are highly active.

5. Rough sex is best.
Oh I love the name of this eight legged master! The male spider, Harpactea sadistica, knows what it means to dominate. Normally, female spiders have a heavy loaded reputation for eating their males during sex. The red back dominatrix is not only about 5000% heavier than her boy toy, but about 65% of the time, she will slowly eat the insides of her play thing during the deed. It makes sense, longer sex means more effective fertilisation, plus its good nutrition if you want to lay a big batch of eggs. To overcome this man eating webwife, male spiders often deposit their sperm in small packages on her web. The Harpactea sadistica male spider is no pussy. He'll trap his slave, subdue her, pierce her abdomen and directly fertilise her ovaries. It's a pretty smart way of making sure that fertilisation happens. Avoids the whole 'sticky mucus, anti-sperm antibodies etc.' problem some of us humans have.

6. The Lorena Bobbit of the animal kingdom.
The female bumble bee. The ultimate babe. The drone bee deposits its endophallus mid flight and then dies a slow and painful death. Having lost its penis and abdominal organs, there is no hope for the male bumble bee. Too bad he won't live long enough to star in his own porn movie, ala John Bobbitt's Frankenpenis.

nsfw.

These are pretty tame images that I have collected from Sandy Kim's website, my new favourite photographer. To all voyeurs, please check out http://www.sandykim.com/xxx.html. Art should make one uncomfortable. I like honest art.

More sexy facts because I love them so!
- In Medieval times, breast milk was considered to be diverted menstrual fluid. Milk does not not equal blood, otherwise I am grateful for choosing soy milk over skim milk in my coffee. This is what you get for being a vampire obsessed culture.
- Men, your penis is actually one third longer than you think. What you see is just the "root" and the rest is covered by the skin. Tell your lady about your 10 inch erection today!
- Thanks to MRI scanners, scientists now know that your male friend takes on the "shape of a boomerang" during intercourse. How do we know this? Stick two people in an MRI and watch them have sex. You can see why, initially, only extremely flexible (dancers) were used in such studies. It's tight in the MRI tube (no pun intended, though the MRI machine is, in retrospect, quite a funny looking machine).
- Israel Meizner of The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine witnessed a 7 month old fetus "grasping his penis in a fashion resembling masturbation movements". You're in the womb for 9 months. You've got to pass time some how, I guess.
- The earliest orgasm on record (a Kinsey observation) was seen in a three year old girl. I wonder if the 7 month old fetus had a "happy ending".
- Evolutionists reckon that a man evolved a penis with a ridged flans so that he could scoop up competitors' semen before thrusting in and leaving his own sperm. The last portion of the ejaculate also contains a natural spermicide. What an intelligent creature the penis is! (let's face it, the penis and the man are not one)
- Masturbation is bad. Jk, lol but the that's what peeps thought in the 1850s when they manufactured the Penile Prickling Ring. This ingenious devise was engineering to be placed around the sleeping penis. If, God forbid, the creature expanded during sleep, the ring would expose metal spikes and prevent the wet dream/erection from continuing on. Using negative reinforcement, it was believed that you would be able to contain your arousal. I wonder if these poor men, like Albert and the white rabbit, had any long term complications with arousal and getting it up. Or like Little Albert, shriek and shiver at the sight of their engorged cock. Roy Levin (a sex physiologist) reckons that masturbation evolved because if you jerk off, more fresh sperm is made, keeping you more fertile and thus more evolutionarily advantageous. Too much wanking though can actually deplete your sperm counts but Lewin encourages that you (for medical purposes, clearly) autofellatio every 5 days. I had a friend in school that never busted a nut, but then again, he was getting it on with so many women I could never count on my fingers.
- In 16th and 17th Century France, impotence was legal grounds for divorce. A team of "experts" and examiners (sometimes 15 physicians, surgeons and legal functionaries) would visit the husband up to 2-4 times in some cases, and the man would have to prove that he could get and maintain an erection. If he failed on all accounts, the man would be fined and forbidden to remarry. He would also have to return the dowry received from his wife's family. This is a horrible story. I mean, I'm sure a lot of men out there would not want to touch themselves in front of a group of strangers and the pressure of this entire ordeal could be too much for your little, flaccid twinkle. Isn't it easier to get an erection in a whore house than in the company of 15, what I assume were, geriatric and Sigmund Freud looking (in my head, at least with big Harry Potter glasses and bushy, white beards) males? So many issues! What if the husband is gay, clearly 15 watchful males would be a turn on unlike the loving gaze of his missus. What if he has prostate cancer? This is too much! this may be the beginning of masturbatory webcams!
- The harem obstetrician to Kamil Pasha (an Ottoman Empire statesman), Skevos Zervos, was always really intrigued by Pasha's enthusiastic relations with all 64 of his wives and the feminising effects of testicle removal on eunuchs. What was his response to all of this? Why, clearly it was a good idea to graft testicular tissue from rabbits/dogs onto geriatric gonads. This was 1909 and there is an even more morbid story from Quentin Chief Scientist, Stanley (I've forgotten his first name), which I heard about in an Ethan Bloom lecture at the SymbioticA symposium. Stanley grafted dead prisoners' gonads onto prisoners. According to Stanley, asthmatics reported improvement, as did diabetics (3/4), and epileptics (3/5). His test subjects apparently saw better and their acne cleared up. Odd how nowadays we don't accept such "inhumane" and "brutal" human experimentation. Science can only progress if you prove that something isn't due to A and B. But that's for another blog post, I guess. Makes you wonder if we really should be looking so deeply into the beauty of the human body (coming from the Medical student :s ). The Chinese did experiments on genitals as well. Instead of grafting tissue, though, they dried it and made it into pills or potions. The Chinese journal Materia Medica (1597) recommends the penises of dogs, wild cats and otters for impotence treatment.

Even recently Earthtrust found a restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan, which sold penis soup to male diners (at $320 a serving!) though I'm not too sure if it's since then been shut down. I assume it has. Interestingly, one penis makes soup for 8. Time to start poaching tigerzzzzz.

ear worms.

drinking red wine, listening to Ella and pondering. I wonder when it was that people started to get songs stuck in their heads - ear worms, if you will. I guess now with iPods, CDs and television, we're constantly being exposed to tunes and the potential that a horrible tune sung by a whiney and anorexic American with a good beat, will get stuck in our minds - play on and on preventing us from being productive. Evolutionists hypothesise that our brains have evolved in such a way that we are prone to remembering repetitions in rhythms and in melodies. In hunter-gatherer societies such a trait could have been advantageous - if you remember the sounds of the birds and wind in a location known for good vegetation or scrumptious meat (lol) you could continually return to the same place and increase the survival of yourself and your offspring by bringing back enough to feed the fam etc. This evolutionary adaption has perhaps become a burden in an environment inflitrated by doof doof rhythms and banal melodies!

It's similar to the obesity problem. Once upon a time, having a sugar tooth meant that you would be more likely to consume high energy foods (because they are indeed tasty and delicious!) which were difficult to find. The Aztecs must have gone CRAAZZZzzzZZZZZyyyy when they found the cocoa bean! Now, a sugar tooth where delicious cupcakes and carrot cakes are just around the corner leads to unhealthy weight gain. (I read an interesting article today about how thigh circumference is correlated to premature death - the smaller the thigh, the more likely you are to die early or suffer from heart disease. Thank you Body Pump and thyroid disorder for rendering my thighs MASSIVE. Clearly, I am never dying). Our hunter-gatherer brains start to think that simply because you hear the latest Rhiana song 219346234750 times in shopping centres, clothing stores that this is something that should be stored in our minds. Oh, faulty brain! Why, why do you torment me so! Mark Twain wrote about this ear worm phenomena in one of his short stories - but were humans before this time also afflicted by the burrowing worm? Perhaps, but I doubt it was in the same way.

I read about epileptic/temporal lobe tumour patients that often hear music right before seizing. In a world that didn't hear music, did this exist? Did you hear bird calls or rhythms? How can one hear music if you're not exposed to it? Or is it perhaps your own invention? But if you don't know what music is, how can you construct a song in your mind? Are we just inately predisposed to melodies? I haven't felt so strongly for music in a long time. I wish I could hear music in my dreams and compose based on these melodies upon waking like my friend can. I used to think that I was somewhat less musical than my perfect pitch friends. I don't think so anymore. Music is much more than that.

Oh Ella, I've missed you so. As much as I miss NYC and more so than past memories.

"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather. Since my man and I ain't together. keeps rainin' all the time."

Dear God, I love how I feel right now.

depression is a fever.

I am now HOOKED on blogging. Came across a really interesting article a few minutes ago. According to a research team led by Paul Andrews (Virginia Commonwealth University), there might be a bright side to depression.

Depression is perhaps not a mental illness, but rather an evolutionary adaption to problematic social circumstances. Similar to the way that a fever directs the body's immune reaction to the place of infection/disease, depression may also play a role in redirecting the brain's resources to solving social dilemmas.

For years, doctors have diagnosed me with depression/anxiety and now statistics are coming out suggesting that 30-50% of all people will suffer from depression at some point in their lives. I wrote an article once about one research team that sees this increase in depression as the product of a deprived pleasure pathway. Life has become simpler. We don't need to plough fields in order to get wheat, we can just stick a mi goreng packet into the microwave and voila, din din is served. There's no sense of achievement (though perhaps getting off your butt and turning off Modern Family for the first time in the day can be seen as a big highlight). We all feel depressed at some points, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have a disorder. In fact, only about 1% of the general population has the actual disorder. It's a hot topic and Andrews' team now sees depression not as a liability, but rather, something that can potentially bring real benefits

I obsess over things; mainly to do with what's actually bugging me. Some people think about their next meal or advertisement slogans or well thought out puns. I think about why I feel the way I do. What I did wrong, what I could have done better, how I can improve, why didn't I say the things that were actually going through my mind and so on and so on. It's frustrating! Once upon a time, I thought that because I couldn't switch off my mind, it meant that I was lacking in maturity, common sense or intelligent thought but that's not the case at all. I sit my exams, I get depressed over them, I can't sleep at night and without fail, I always end up getting over 90%. My mind is highly analytical. Although I mainly analyse and re-analyse the causes for my depressive cycles, I can apply that sort of mind frame to anything, perfect my understanding and ask well thought out questions.

Andrews' team came across this conclusion in their research also. They found that sufferers of depression scored lower on cognitive tests but did better on complex problems that required deep thought. There's this one protein, SHT1A that binds serotonin (responsible for happy feelings!) and higher levels of the protein have been observed in depressed patients. The team suggests it's this protein that helps supply energy to neurons involved in the ventrolatral prefrontal cortex (VLPC) which are integral to keeping us focused on a task. In the happy, non-depressed individual, the VLPC runs out of energy and we lose focus. The depressed VLPC has a constant supply of nutrients and doesn't turn off.

The depressed mind thinks less of food and sex, as these just interrupt flow of thought. The depressed mind hasn't been phased out as we've evolved perhaps because it has the ability to solve social dilemmas that non depressed minds can't. Our analytical minds go into overdrive, we consider the costs and benefits of a given situation, such as a marriage or break up and come up with the best resolution. Oh how I hate seeing gray in a world that sees black and white! :(

I think the ideas are pretty rad and could potentially change the way depression is treated. They do however put into question the effectiveness of cognitive based therapy. Maybe simply talking about the way you feel (i.e. Freudian psychoanalysis) is the best way to go! There's no doubt that depression can be XTREMEly detrimental, though. Is that benefiting anyone or are we just wired to think that depression equals bad and hence conform to that ideal?

It's odd, because even this blog, is just an extension of my obsessively analytical mind. I don't know if I have depression, but I think like most people, I could relate to what was discussed in the article. We all have our own depressive tendencies.