EP86: Don’t Google That

Hello, Lovelies! Welcome to this week’s extensive blog post! (… yay…)

This week we have the honor of having Ruk join us! Ruk hosts the show 5 and 30 with Ruk! 5 and 30 With Ruk is a short form interview podcast. It will feature creators, voice actors, and host from many other podcasts. Each guest will be asked 5 random questions that will range from meaning of life stuff to flat out silly. After they answer each one they will be give 30 seconds to promote whatever they like.

Argonaut

“The argonaut, the only cephalopod to secrete and live in a shell of its own making, is a unique sea creature that swims via jet propulsion – using powerful jets of water squirted through a funnel in its shell.

Male argonauts tend to grow to up to a few centimeters in length, only about 10% of the size of the females, which can reach up to 2 meters long, depending how much they grow their shells.

This sexual dimorphism poses an obvious question – how is reproduction possible when your potential baby daddy is only a fraction of your size?

It’s been found that argonauts have an interesting way of resolving the little issue of copulation. And although live male argonauts have never actually been observed in the wild, an understanding of their reproduction processes has been gleaned from observing a dead male and a live female.

The tiny male throws a modified arm containing spermatozoa (called a hectocotylus) at the female, which will then swim toward the female’s mantle (the sac which stores her organs), finding its way inside and subsequently fertilizing the eggs. A female’s eggs can actually be fertilized by more than one hectocotylus by storing them in the mantle cavity.

The male’s modified arm develops in a pouch under its eye until it’s called upon, at which points it explodes out of the cavity and swims across to the female, attaching itself to her mantle via suckers, and wiggling its way inside.

Males will die after throwing their tentacle at the female. However, unusually for cephalopods, the females don’t die after laying eggs. Instead, they continue to grow and reproduce.”

Garter Snakes

Every spring, the males emerge first from their underground lairs. When a larger female turns up, the males form into a giant mating ball in which a single female is surrounded by up to 100 males who all try to mate with her at the same time. Male garter snakes have also been known to produce female pheromones in order to fool other males into trying to mate with them.

Porcupine

The porcupine mating window is small: females are open to it for only about 8-12 hours per year. But when it rains, it pours. The male porcupine opens by climbing a tree and soaking the female with urine from up to seven feet away. If she likes how it smells, then she will mate with him over and over again until he’s completely exhausted. The 12-hour mating period is enough to get the female pregnant 90 per cent of the time.

Hippos

Urine and feces are the cologne of the hippo world. To impress female hippos, males don’t just defecate and urinate near them; they use spinning tails and some of the most powerful farts on earth to fling the mess far and wide, to make sure all the females in the area can smell it. If he catches a female’s interest, she’ll raise her rear up out of the water to show she’s ready to reciprocate… by showering him in dung. Scientists call this “submissive defecation.”

Bees

lady bee has to be ready to breed – can hold on to semen for a long time – males can get in and take out old semen and put in their own – to avoid competition, the testicles with swell up and explode and blocks off the access portal (and he dies)

“When a drone bee has the rare chance to mate with the queen, it’s the last thing he does. He ejaculates with an explosive pop, rupturing his endophallus. He becomes paralyzed and flips over backward. His barbed endophallus remains in the queen, ripping open his abdomen as it’s torn from the rest of his body. He dies. She holds onto his semen for later use.”

How Literal Fuck Hats Saved the Peregrine Falcon – Click the link for pictures and a video

“Porcupine Falcon” a.k.a. PEREGRINE

1960’s the falcons were going extinct. – “Peregrine falcon, the fastest animal on earth, was saved from extinction by a copulation hat.

“Breeding falcons this way is very intense. I get more anxious than the birds do,” says Wood. “They only breed from the beginning of March until the end of May and you have to be in there with them on a daily basis… You know, I lead a fairly normal life meaning I have a family. I have a wife. I value my human relationships. It can be difficult to act like a falcon every day for three months. You can’t just casually do it whenever you want to.”

Indeed, a falcon won’t fuck just any old hat. The birds need to be romanced a little bit first. They need to be courted. To achieve this, a falconer must maintain consistency. The propagation manual suggests always wearing the same clothes throughout the breeding season, and that “the [fuck] hat should be worn at all times so the bird learns to accept it as part of your normal appearance.”

Communication is also crucial. Falconers are instructed to mimic the female falcon’s chirp and even bow their head in a rocking motion similar to what a mating female might do. An interested male falcon will then show his interest in a variety of ways, including reciprocating vocalizations, or performing ledge displays. An interested falcon may even take on a frozen body posture of paralyzed anticipation.

When it’s time to make the magic happen, the falconer turns his back to the falcon before kneeling on the ground. A ready bird will then mount the hat, flap its wings wildly, perhaps make a chittering noise, before pressing its abdomen against the hat, and concluding with “a noticeable shudder” during ejaculation.

Afterwards, falconers often reward the birds with a bit of food and end the session with a “chup” vocalization. Once outside of the Peregrine’s chamber, the falconer uses a capillary tube to collect the semen from the hat, maybe only a drop or two, which is then taken directly to a female falcon and deposited into her oviduct using the same capillary tube from the collection.”

3 decades later, they have saved the falcons.

Falcon breeding hat could be yours for 200 euro via: https://www.avianbreeding.co.uk/products/falcon-copulation-hats

Angler Fish

Angler fish mating begins when the male angler fish literally sinks his teeth into the female. He attaches himself permanently and lives as a parasite on the female’s larger body. However, as their bodies fuse, the male becomes completely absorbed into the female, losing any independent existence. All that remains are a pair of gonads, which the female keeps to use when she’s ready to reproduce.

Puffer Fish

Male spends days creating patterns on the ocean floor – fins and puffs of air – can take up to a week – up to 7 ft in diameter – currents can take them away – if lady likes it, she will lay eggs in the design

Garden Snails

Intersex – both snails impregnated – inject sperm with “love spear” – can be stabbed to death

Flat Worms

Wage wars to see who will fertilize and who will carry – penis fencing! They try to stab each other to impregnate the other slug – can be stabbed anywhere and become pregnant – could you image winning and impregnating the other slug just to turn around and be side-swiped by a rouge penis?

Leopard Slug

Dangle from trees by long slime cord with bright blue penis hanging out – tangled up together to mate

Vole

Doesn’t eat or groom – can mate for 12 hours – then die

Greater sage glause (?) bird

Spring mating season – males dance by strutting inflating special air sacks on chest that shoot out of feathers – boob balloons – sounds – friction of chest feather causes cricket chirp sound

Bird of paradise

Feathers around chest area flip out (like a feather tutu) to appear 6x larger in oval shape – feather markings look like black circle with giant blue eyes and a weird smile

Giraffes

The female has to be in heat – hard to tell – male drinks urine to tell if in heat – sneaks up behind her and rubs head on backside until she is forced to pee

Nursing Web Spider

The male gift wrapped in white silk brought to lady – when accepted, he starts mating immediately while she unwraps and eats the snack – male sometimes sucks the juice out of snack first or just bring a stick – the female shuts him off as soon as she discovers the deception

Hang Fly

The male hang fly is allowed to mate while she eats the present – once she’s done eating, he has to stop – if he finished first, he takes the food and gives it to someone else to mate with

Bonobos

Bonobos behave like people – face to face (only us and them?) – sex as currency – Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in tongue kissing

Speaking of ducks… lets segway into weird penises…

Argentine Lake Duck

Animal as having the longest bird penis on record, reaching a whopping 42.5 centimeters (16.7in). Most birds don’t actually have penises and they instead mate by touching openings. This finding was therefore a bit of a surprise, and scientists aren’t entirely sure as to why it is quite so long. Some speculate that the brush-like tip of the penis may serve to remove sperm from other males that has already been deposited in the female’s cloaca.

Snakes and Lizards

Snakes and Lizards, which are collectively known as squamates, have some rather funky genitals. Their male sexual organ is called a hemipenis; individual males have two hemipenes which they alternate between when mating with females. Some are even embellished with sharp spines to stop the male from slipping out of the female’s cloaca. Lovely.

Barnacles

Barnacles have the largest penises in the animal kingdom; they can be up to 40 times the length of their body. This is because they don’t roam around looking for mates so they have to let their penises do the roaming for them.

Echidnas

Primitive mammals laying eggs and have quadruple penises

Sugar gliders

Double and frighteningly dexterous

The most terrifying/weirdest penises of the animal world

Female Hyenas

Produce a lot of testosterone, meaning that they develop pseudo-penises. These are actually just enlarged clitorises, but they can reach up to 7 inches long! The poor hyenas actually have to give birth through these appendages, and unfortunately a lot of the offspring die of suffocation during the process. Copulation is also tricky business since the male has to somehow get his penis inside her lady penis.

Otters

Scientists from the Cardiff University Otter Project and the Chemicals, Health and Environment Monitoring Trust have been monitoring the otter population for many years, and this month published a report based on 755 otters that died between 1992 and 2009. According to its website, the Cardiff University Otter Project was founded in 1992 to collect dead otters across England and Wales in order to study tissue samples and monitor aquatic contamination. Using samples collected from the otters, scientists found that male otters suffered from an increase in a variety of reproductive health issues, including a decrease in penis bone weight, undescended testicles and cysts on sperm-carrying tubes, the BBC reports.