h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...there's a type of sea creature whose penis is longer than the rest of it and it floats off on its own in search of a female...

Sounds interesting! Do you know the name of it?

I'm not sure where to post this, so i'll just answer here.

My first response is WOW... thats going to be a a big entry. Just off the top of my head I can think of quite a few random sex facts about animals...

For example: Barnicles have the longest penis reletie to body size in the entire animal kingdom. apparently if a human was similarly endowed, his penis would be the length of nelsons column.

The strange dog/cat thingy from madagascar, the fosa, gets stuck together with its mate for a while after sex... it looks rather painfull to be honest.

Its not just snakes that have two penises... some lizards do to, and I don't think all snakes are endowed with a bifurcated one... not sure on that though.

Oh... the haplo-diploidy. Really really really amazingly interesting, but not really sex. I think as this has the potential to be an enormous entry, you should keep it to sex and sex alone, rather then interesting genetics which have a consiquence on sex

There is the alternative mating stratigies of some fish... techinally called in the literature: sneeky f**ks. (true!)

The sperm of a male drosophila is bigger then its body, but again... not really sex, just the bits involved.

Like I say... thats just of the top of my head! I think in order to do the subject justice, this needs to be a rather mighty entry.

You can put me down for helping (ish) but for the next month or so, i should really be writing my dissertation, hence the ish. It's quite a big ish.

Good, if overwhelming idea though!

Sorry...

Sex changing crocodiles??? Please explain!

But it reminds me: clown fish (as in finding nemo fame) are sequencial hermaphrodites, so born male turn female. (F2039882?thread=606199)

rik

All that was off the top of my head so I'll have to look some of it up. I think the sex-changing crocodiles are ones that change sex depending on the temperature. But I don't remember the details.

Oh and the wolves reference was the same as your Fosa - the male gets locked to the female and has to walk around with her as she gets back to the normal business of feeding etc. This lasts for about 30 minutes.

Ah...

Now I get the sex changing!

It's not just crocodiles. It happens to turtles as well, but its not in the adults, its the temperature at which the eggs are incubated. There is a critical temperature and either side of that makes the infants either male or female. I don't think it's too much of an issue with crocs as they tend to the nest and add remove earth accordingly (i think...), but with turtles its a huge problem. The sex ratio of sea turtles is totally skewed because of warming of beaches and things... and then conservationists come and move the nests to "safe" places with no consideration as to the overall temperature!!! arg! Sorry... turtle conservation annoys me!

Um... can we stick external links in forums? I found a classic wee film of some fossa loving!

Oh god...

this is going to get silly! Every time i'm about to switch of the computer to do something constructive, I remember yet another animal!! This really is going to be a large entry!

Lekking? Do you know what it is? Basically in birds, loads of males come together in quite a small area and strut their stuff for the females... essentially its a total meat market. The hottest males get the most ladies! Simple!

But i think no mention of animal mating systems is complete without the bower bird... they build species specific structures - bowers - in the forest in order to attract females... think nests but gone strange. The bowers have walls and screens and all sorts of random bits. The female comes to inspect it, and if she approves of his handy work then a very elongated mating ritual takes place involving peek-a-boo around the bower and all sorts of other nonsense! It's rather hard to explain... but its certainly worth a mention.

Dunnocks... wee bird we get here... have no set mating pattern. They can be polygynous or polyandrous depending on whether the males or females get there way!


Right! Enough for now!

rik

Found something:

The male paper nautilus (and here) is more profligate with its tentacles. The paper nautilus is cephalopod which, like its cousin, the chambered nautilus, "sails the unshadowed main."* When the male detects a receptive female, he avoids intimacy. It's sex at a distance. His spermatophore-bearing tentacle detaches itself from the body and swims -- under its own power -- to the female, being in effect a swimming penis.

Just how this peculiar arrangement evolved is anyone's guess. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the female paper nautilus still retains a molluscan shell, while the male has lost this armor and looks more like an aspiring octopus. Without a shelly defense, the male may not want to get too close to the female!

(from http://jaarons.typepad.com/squidblog/squid_facts/) Picture and more info: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/tcp/Argo.html

That fits in closely with the "she broke it off" reference to octopuses, where in some species, the end of the male's sperm-bearing tentacle breaks off inside the female.

I'm so pleased humans just hold hands

GB

After the initial idea for this project, I've lost momentum and haven't done anything. I think there was only one other researcher who was interested in contributing, and that's "another primate (called rik)". Perhaps I'll revive this when I've finished my Greece project.