About
If you've got a story, picture, or link that's beyond belief, send it to tipline@haveigotoneforyou.com with your name and where you heard about it and we'll add it!
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
July 18 2011
Studly Fish Aren’t Born, They’re Made—Sometimes Overnight
Some people like to say that men are always ready (and eager) for sex. Whether or not that’s true for humans, Stanford University researchers have recently learned that it is the case for certain male fish. Downtrodden male African cichlids, whose reproductive systems are so suppressed that biologists thought the fish couldn’t produce sperm, can successfully spawn within hours of rising to power, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Like many other animal species, a single leader—the biggest, baddest male—runs each group of African cichlids. This alpha male, which often sports vibrant blue scales, monopolizes the females and beats down other, weaker males in the community. (High school, anyone?) Because of this sexual exclusion, subordinate males suffer a noticeable pallor, decreased levels of reproductive hormones, and severely shrunken testes. Essentially, the fish trade sperm production for growth spurts, in hopes of someday overtaking the alpha male. Why waste energy making sperm if you can’t use it, right?
At least, that’s what lead author Jacqueline Kustan and her team thought. But when they took a closer look, they saw that the dominated cichlids generated no fewer sperm than the dominating ...
June 17 2011
The Better to Ignore You With: Female Frogs Deaf to Males’ Ultrasonic Calls
The concave-eared torrent frog.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hear each other over the low-frequency roar of jetliners and subway trains? For some rodents, bats, and marine mammals, environmental noise doesn’t normally pose a problem, as they can communicate at ultrasonic frequencies (greater than 20 kHz, just above our maximum hearing range). There are also a couple of amphibians that exhibit this trait, but in an odd twist, researchers have now learned that female concave-eared torrent frogs are deaf to the ultrasonic components of the males’ calls.
The concave-eared frog is a tree-loving native of the Huangshan Mountains in China. In choosing this woodsy area, the nocturnal amphibians must put up with one minor annoyance: streams that produce constant ambient noise. In 2006, Jun-Xian Shen, a biophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, and his research team discovered that the frogs get around this sonic clutter by adding ultrasonic frequencies to their normal calls (pdf). The frogs were the first non-mammalian vertebrate found to do this, and scientists have since learned that Borneo’s hole-in-the-head frogs (yes, that’s the actual name) also chirp in ultrasonic frequencies. After finding these ultrasonic noises, ...
April 13 2011
What the Duck? Lady Mallards May Get Down With Bright-Billed Drakes to Avoid STDs
When it comes to mallard bills, brighter is better: A bright yellow bill is duck-speak for “I’m healthy,” attracting more female ducks than dingy green ones. After discovering that avian semen has antibacterial properties, scientists then found that the semen of brighter-billed males killed more bacteria than the semen of darker-billed ones. It implies that by seeking out bright-billed males, female ducks are protecting themselves against bacteria-related sexually transmitted diseases.
In her experiment, University of Oslo researcher Melissah Rowe collected semen from ducks (a feat unto itself—the videos in this link are amazing, but watch at your own risk) of various bill colors, and then tested how well the semen killed bacteria such as E. coli. She found that ducks whose bills had more carotenoids—an organic pigment that brightens bills—also had semen that more effectively killed E. coli. However, they discovered that the semen’s effectiveness against the bacteria S. aureus wasn’t associated with bill color, possibly implying that this bacteria doesn’t pose much harm to ducks.
Although they’re not sure how much E. coli affects ducks, the scientists know that this bacteria can harm the quality of ...
April 04 2011
The Measure of a Man’s Private Parts Is Connected to His Fertility
When it comes to male fertility, length matters—the length between the scrotum and anus, that is. New research suggests that measuring a man’s “anogenital distance,” or AGD, is a fast, low-tech, relatively accurate method of getting an idea of the quality of a man’s sperm.
In a new study, University of Rochester professor Shanna Swan and her colleagues broke out the measuring tape and assessed the anus-to-scrotum distance of 126 men born in 1988 or later. The men whose AGD’s were shorter than the average of two inches were 7.3 times more likely to have low sperm counts than their more well-endowed…er, well-distanced, brethren. These men with shorter AGD’s also had low sperm motility and poor sperm morphology.
So why on Earth, you’re wondering, would this be the case?
As DISCOVER said in the 2008 article The Dirty Truth About Plastics, “Biologists recognize a reduction in the length between the anus and the sex organ as an external marker of feminization, easily measured because it is typically twice as long in males as in females.” This reduction in AGD “may be caused by exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals” in the womb; Swan’s previous ...
March 04 2011
The Genetic Gamesmanship of a Seven-Sexed Creature
What could be better than two types of sexes? For one organism, the answer isn’t three, but seven! And to top it off, these seven sexes aren’t evenly distributed in a population, although researchers have now developed a mathematical model that can accurately estimate the probabilities in this crap-shoot game of sexual determination.
Meet Tetrahymena thermophila, which in addition to its seven different sexes—conveniently named I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII—has such a complex sex life that it requires an extra nucleus. This fuzzy, single-celled critter has a larger macronucleus that takes care of most cellular functions and a smaller micronucleus dedicated to genetic conjugation.
The other odd thing about this one-celled wonder is that the population of the seven sexes are skewed, leading Unversity of Houston researcher Rebecca Zufall and her colleagues to ask: What gives?To answer that question, they created mathematical models of T. thermophila populations, and discovered that different versions of the same gene, or alleles, gave advantages to different sexes. Unlike humans, in which an individual’s sex is fully determined by its genes, the genotypes of these creatures provide only probabilities of developing ...
January 28 2011
Devious Mating 101: The Lesson of the Fairy Wren and the Butcherbird
You’d think birds would hush up at the sound of a predator, especially if that predator’s name is the “butcherbird.” But that’s not the style of the male splendid fairy-wren, and it turns out he has a good reason for raising a ruckus when the butcherbird calls: it helps him get a mate.
Researchers studied this wren-butcherbird interaction in Southern Australia by playing iPod bird songs for wild wrens to hear. As the press release reports, the researchers determined the the males were engaging in a form of “vocal hitchhiking”:
“We have shown that females do, in fact, become especially attentive after hearing butcherbird calls,” said Emma Greig, PhD, first author of the study and currently a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University. “So, it seems that male fairy-wrens may be singing when they know they will have an attentive audience, and, based on the response of females, this strategy may actually work!”
But how do you tell if a bird is paying attention? The scientists calculated attention by whether the female wren looked towards the call ...
January 20 2011
Sneezy After Sex? You Could Have Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome
If you experience feverish, burning-eyed orgasms, don’t rejoice–you should probably consider visiting your doctor. Scientists believe such flu-like symptoms arise when men are allergic to their own semen.
It’s called post orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS). Although the term has been around since 2002, researchers led by Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, have for the first time shown that some men suffer from a semen allergy. Such men, after ejaculating, not only have burning eyes and fever-like feelings that can last for a week, but also feel as tired as post-marathon runners and have noses that run faster than Usain Bolt.
In one study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine this week, the researchers pricked the skin of 33 POIS-diagnosed men with their own diluted semen, and discovered that nearly 90 percent of them had allergic reactions as a result. As Reuters reports:
“These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome,” Waldinger said in a telephone interview. He said the findings “contradict the idea that the complaints have a ...
January 14 2011
Study Says: Laugh Your Way to a Pregnant Belly
Whether you chortle, chuckle, or cackle, having a good laugh–as we’ve known for decades–reduces stress. And according to an Israeli study, it can also make you pregnant.
OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But researchers who studied 219 women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) discovered that women were more likely to become pregnant if they were paid a visit by a professional “medical clown” after the procedure. The numbers speak for themselves: 36 percent of the clowned women became pregnant, whereas only 20 percent of the un-clowned women conceived.
According to the study, led by Shevach Friedler and published in Fertility and Sterility, a medical merrymaker visited the fertility clinic regularly for a year. Half of the women studied were visited by the jester soon after they had received a fertilized embryo. Each time, the funny-bone tickler stayed for 15 minutes and acted through a set routine. As the Guardian reports:
The researchers found that, compared to women who came to the clinic on a “non-clown” day, those who’d had a laugh were more than twice as likely to become pregnant, when other factors such as age, type of infertility ...
November 08 2010
Toasty Testicles From Laptops Could Make for Less Fertile Nerds
Being a computer nerd just keeps getting worse. Not only can being addicted to the interwebz make it hard to meet chicks, but now research is showing that a man’s relationship with his laptop computer can affect even his most intimate of areas.
The study, titled “Protection from scrotal hyperthermia in laptop computer users,” studied how laptop positioning affected testicle temperature. Participants were asked to sit with a laptop on their knees while the research team monitored the temperature of their scrotum (both the left and right sides).
The three positions they tried were: sitting with the laptop on the lap with legs together, the same position with a laptop pad under the computer, and sitting with legs spread 70 degrees apart. They found that the open legged position was the best at lowering testicle temp (a total of about half a degree on the left, and a little less on the right). As the authors explain in the study’s abstract:
Scrotal temperature increased significantly regardless of legs position or use of a lap pad. However, it was significantly lower in session 3 (1.41°C ± 0.66°C on the left and 1.47°C ± 0.62°C on the right) than in session 2 (2.18°C ± 0.69°C and 2.06°C ± 0.72°C) or session 1 (2.31°C ± 0.96°C and 2.56°C ± 0.91°C). A scrotal temperature elevation of 1°C was reached at 11 minutes in session 1, 14 minutes in session 2, and 28 minutes in session 3.
And while a few degrees doesn’t sound so dangerous, it’s actually enough to effect sperm quality (a rise of about two degree Fahrenheit can be an issue), especially given the length of time most people spend with their laptops these days. As the study author told Reuters:
“Millions and millions of men are using laptops now, especially those in the reproductive age range,” said Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, a urologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who led the new study. “Within 10 or 15 minutes their scrotal temperature is already above what we consider safe, but they don’t feel it,” he added.
Since the study only monitored temperature changes, not infertility or sperm quality, the authors can’t say for sure whether laptops will affect the ability to have children. But Sheynkin told Reuters that excessive laptopping could cause reproductive problems, though they aren’t likely to be permanent.
“I wouldn’t say that if someone starts to use laptops they will become infertile,” Sheynkin told Reuters Health. But frequent use might contribute to reproductive problems, he said, because “the scrotum doesn’t have time to cool down.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Warning All Competitive Male Cyclists: Less than 5% of Your Sperm May Be Normal
Discoblog: Answered: All Your Nagging Questions About Testicle Location
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Finally, a male contraceptive: behold the ball cozy!
80beats: Testicles Could Yield Stem Cells Without the Ethical Complications
80beats: New Contraceptive Wins Gates Money: Blasting Testicles w/Ultrasound
Image: Flickr/Ed Yourdon
October 29 2010
Don’t Try This at Home: Flamingos Get Their Blush From Oily Rump Glands
Researchers found new evidence of the importance of make-up while studying Spanish flamenco dancers flamingos. The scientists discovered that the birds augment their signature coloring by applying tints drawn from their own glands–and they use their painted plumage to attract mates.
The hue of the leggy birds’ feathers come primarily from the pigments in their diet, but researcher Juan Amat found that they also secrete the colored pigments, called carotenoids, from their preen glands. Flamingos (and many other birds) press their heads to the preen glands at the base of their tails to pick up feather-protecting oils, which they then spread around their bodies.
The researchers realized that those oils contain pigments, ranging from red to yellow, by keeping an eye on the flamingos’ feathers and behavior: They noticed that the coloring of the birds was brightest during the mating season, and quickly diminished after they found a mate. Amat told BBC News:
“The rubbing is time-consuming,” Dr Amat told BBC News. “And the more frequently the birds practise it, the more coloured they appear. If the birds stop the rubbing, [their] plumage colour fades in a few days because carotenoids[pigments] bleach quickly in the sunlight.”
So the birds go through extensive preening rituals, using their cheeks to rub the colored oils into their feathers, in the hopes of attracting mates (similar to characters from the Jersey Shore). Amat explained to BBC News that the flamingos who paid more attention to their plumage were more successful in their mating endeavors:
“We found that the more coloured birds started breeding earlier than paler ones,” explained Dr Amat. “So by mating to a colourful bird an individual may increase its reproductive success, as from previous studies we know that the first pairs to start breeding gain access to the best breeding sites.”
The researchers published their findings in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. It isn’t just the male flamingos that work hard to attract mates; the game goes both ways with this species. Amat’s team noticed that the females actually spent more time coloring their feathers than the males. And, as he told BBC News, they reaped the rewards for this extra investment:
“We have data indicating that females make-up much more often than males – just like in humans,” he told BBC News. “Also, we know that flamingos apply make-up more often in better habitats, and that the more coloured birds obtain food of better quality.”
Related content:
DISCOVER: Stunning High-Speed Photos of Birds (photos)
DISCOVER: The Mating Game’s Biggest Cheaters (photos)
Not Exactly Rocket Science: The renaissance of technicolour dinosaurs continues (and the gloves come off…)
Gene Expression: Pigments: zebrafish and humans
80beats: Geneticists Shake the Avian Family Tree
Image: Flickr/stevehdc
September 16 2010
In the Light of a Streetlamp, Young Blue Tits Get More Action
It can be hard to sleep with a light shining in your window, but for the male blue tit, this night-lighting gives him a sexual advantage. Researchers have found that male tits that live near streetlights wake up and start to sing on average three minutes earlier than the rest of the gang.
These birds are more likely to be chosen as mates because under normal conditions, early risers are the strongest fully grown birds. When adventurous lady-birds go looking for extramarital affairs in the morning light they are attracted to early risers because they assume they are the macho, macho men of the group.
As a result, any male blue tit–even a young and scrawny fellow–that lives within 50 feet of a streetlight gets about twice as much extramarital action, and has more offspring than male tits that live in other parts of the neighborhood.
Study author Bart Kempenaers told Science News that they don’t know what effect this might have on the population:
From an otherwise unattractive male’s point of view, streetlights must be great. But Kempenaers says he doesn’t have data on the consequences for the blue tit population as a whole if artificial light inspires many females to mate with males that they would normally shun.
The study found that male blue tits weren’t the only ones influenced by artificial mood-lighting. The females were also affected: They started laying their eggs about 1.5 days earlier than the females that nested further from the lights.
Kempenaers says that light pollution is usually ignored in favor of other, more obvious pollution. But, he says, it’s plenty disruptive for mating behavior in these birds, and for many other behaviors in many other species. As biogeographer Travis Longcore told Science News:
The new paper “deals with things that aren’t as obvious as dead bodies on the ground but are no less profound,” he says.
There may soon be bad news for these blue tits masquerading as studs: Companies are currently working to develop and test street lights that are less ecologically disturbing. I guess those poor birds will have to find some other way to pull the wool over the eyes of their potential mates.
Related content:
80beats: Bird Sex Round-up: Why Monogamous Birds Cooperate, Why Finches Cheat
80beats: Finch Mothers Can Subconsciously Control the Gender of Their Little Ones
20 Things: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Sex
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Male bowerbirds create forced perspective illusions that only females see
Image: Flickr / Ben Fredrickson (xjrlokix)
September 08 2010
When Male Stickleback Fish Refuse to Ask for Directions
The ninespine stickleback can communicate with fish friends to figure out the best places to eat, but one thing seems to make otherwise social males disregard the group: sex.
Two researchers have found that, as these male fish prepare to breed, they ignore the group and go off alone to explore their environment in the hunt for food. At the same time, egg-bearing female fish do the opposite, sticking more closely to the pack and copying others’ behaviors to find food.
The researchers from the University of St. Andrews published these findings today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B. They suspect that staying with the group helps save the females from predators and conserve their energy, while venturing out alone might help males find other food sources more efficiently. Coauthor Kevin Laland explains:
“While copying others is less risky, it can also be less accurate, compared to collecting firsthand information. The hormonal changes that cause a male to enter his reproductive phase may also be responsible for this transition to more antisocial behaviour.”
Mike Webster of the University of St. Andrews, who coauthored the study with Laland, invoked the clichéd male driver refusing to ask for directions–but with a twist.
“We are all familiar with the stereotype of males refusing to ask for directions–this might apply to fish too, but only when they are preparing to breed.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Prozac Ocean: Fish Absorb Our Drugs, and Suffer For It
Discoblog: Bizarro Animal Sex Story of the Day
Discoblog: Charge by the Hour? Scottish Volunteers Build Mating Motel for Frogs
DISCOVER: Ladies’ Night in Animal Kingdom
Image: Press Office, University of St Andrews
Very Serious Scientific Study Asks: Which Dance Moves Drive Girls Wild?
Researchers say they have uncovered the dance floor moves to make the ladies go wild–at least if you’re a naked, faceless, non-gendered avatar. After recording 19 men, aged 18 to 35, with a 12-camera system as they danced in a laboratory, the researchers projected each man’s individual moves onto a computer model and asked 39 women what they thought.
The Good:
The Bad:
The avatars ruled out the influence of status or sheer attractiveness and allowed the researchers to focus on movements alone. As reported by Reuters, they found they could divide the men judged “good” and “bad” dancers by looking at eight moves: how much they moved their necks, torsos, left shoulders, and wrists; how they varied the movements of their necks, torsos, and left wrists; and how quickly they moved their right knees. Lead author Nick Neave said to Reuters:
“We now know which area of the body females are looking at when they are making a judgment about male dance attractiveness.”
The complete findings appear in the journal Biology Letters, but Neave told the BBC that variety is the real secret for avoiding low-rated “dad dancing.”
“It was not just the speed of the movements, it was also the variability of the movement . . . someone who is twisting, bending, moving, nodding.”
The team, which compares the dance club moves to wild animal courtship displays, believes the good moves might be a sign of “male quality in terms of health, vigour or strength.” As far as we know, the avatars did not get any of the women’s numbers.
Related content:
Discoblog: Dancing With the Scientists: Researchers Express Findings in Interpretive Dance
Discoblog: You Can Dance if You Want to, You Can Learn from Different Bees
Discoblog: Does a Dancing Cockatoo Really Feel the Rhythm?
Discoblog: So You Think You Can Dance: Spider Edition
September 01 2010
A Romantic Getaway for Japanese Men & Their Virtual Girlfriends
Don’t be fooled by the men taking solo vacation pictures and eating alone at the Japanese resort town of Atami. These guys may look lonely as they sit and poke at their video game devices, but love is in the air. In a promotion that ended yesterday, Atami teamed up with Konami, the manufacturer of the dating video game LovePlus+, to offer a place for players and their virtual girlfriends to get away.
The game, available on Nintendo’s handheld DS, allows players to win their girlfriend’s virtual heart by completing homework, working out, texting, kissing (using a stylus to touch the girl’s face), and calling (via the system’s built-in microphone). It made headlines last year when one player, SAL9000, decided to marry his virtual girl Nene Anegasaki (see video above, via Boing Boing).
Play the dating game just right and you win a virtual getaway to Atami. The recent promotion allowed players to visit the sites they’d seen in the game in real life, though with a little plus–their girlfriends’ faces plastered on everything from banners to fish cakes.
Atsurou Ohno, managing director of Atami’s Hotel Ohnoya, told the The Wall Street Journal in a video interview that Atami tried to create a real experience for the some 1,500 “couples” who flocked to the town.
“We place two of everything in the rooms, even if there is only one person.”
Some of the guests paid up to $500 for a night in Atami hotel rooms–which, we also note from the WSJ video, had two separate beds.
Related content:
Discoblog: Lust & Love Apps: Playboy Tames Down, Imaginary Girlfriend Steps Up
Discoblog: Augmented Reality Phone App Can Identify Strangers on the Street
Discoblog: Is Apple Taking Sexy Back? Raunchy Apps Vanish From the App Store
August 04 2010
Why a Primate’s Sexy Smell Only Works on Non-Relatives
Want to attract a good mate and ward off unknown relations? Secrete a smelly substance from that gland on your chest and rub it all over. At least that’s what a mandrill might do: A recent study suggests that the baboon-like primates may use their smelly secretions to distinguish compatible mates from family.
After taking swabs from mandrill sternal glands, researchers genotyped each sample to determine the monkey’s major histocompatibility complex (MHC)–a unique genetic signature related to the animal’s immune system. They also, using a sorting technique called gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, determined each secretion’s chemical makeup, and thus its stink bouquet.
As the study’s leader Leslie Knapp of Cambridge University told the BBC, more “genetically diverse” mandrills, i.e. unrelated, have different MHCs and chemically-speaking different scents:
“[I]t seems that the odour is something that tells us some really important things about the genes of a mandrill.”
If this all sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because some researchers have said the same thing about humans. We somehow–even though researchers can’t seem to pin down human pheromones–seem to pick out one another’s genetic diversity when sniffing out good mates. Related studies have even examined whether birth control messes with our and animal’s don’t-mate-with-me-cousin beacons, which could hypothetically lead to inbreeding.
As Knapp told the BBC, the animal’s colorful face markings also seem important for attracting mates and communicating status. But to complicate matters on our end of the primate family tree, another recent study hinted that, for humans, faces that resemble our own or our parents’ drive us wild, narcissistic lot that we are.
Related content:
Discoblog: You Think You (And Your Parents) Are Hot
Discoblog: Can Pheromone Body Wash Make You More Desirable?
Discoblog: The Nose Knows: Men’s Sweat Smells Like Cheese, Women’s Like Onions
Discoblog: Attention Women: You Can Sniff Out a Man’s Sexual Intentions
Image: Wikimedia / Robert Young
August 02 2010
Duck Study: Competition for Mates Causes Males to Grow Longer Penises
Unfamiliar with duck loving? Here are the basics: Corkscrewed vaginas and long, temporary, lymph-filled penises that uncoil in fractions of a second. Now researchers have found that some males’ members grow longer when they’re fiercely competing for a mate.
The photo we have to illustrate this magnificent mating equipment is so graphic–in a duck kind of way–that we’re putting it below the jump. As Carl Zimmer memorably put it when writing on the kinkiness of duck sex, it may not be “appropriate for ducklings.”
Last week, Yale University’s Patricia Brennan presented another finding on duck phalluses at a meeting of the Animal Behavior Society. When competing for females, it seems males of the scaup species try to out-size one another.
Brennan found this after placing male scaups in two setups. In one, seven to eight males lived with five or six females, while in the other, drakes lived in more equal numbers with females. As Science News reports, males with more competition grew longer penises–usually around 15 percent, but up to 25 percent longer than those living with more females.
She told Science News that this competition may be the reason for the bird’s unusual penis size to begin with.
“It’s really likely that having a longer penis evolved in male-male competition.”
For more about duck mating, Brennan’s research, and … videos, check out Carl Zimmer’s post.
Related content:
The Loom: Kinkiness Beyond Kinky
Discoblog: Mixed-Up, Adopted Ducks Try to Mate With the Wrong Species
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Ballistic penises and corkscrew vaginas – the sexual battles of ducks
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Infants match human words to human faces and monkey calls to monkey faces (but not quacks to duck faces)
80Beats: Mockingbird to Annoying Human: “Hey, I Know You”
Image: Patricia Brennan
May 17 2010
A Scientist Finds out That Discussion of Bat Fellatio Is NSFW
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
