Cephaloblogging, sloppy squid sneaker sex, and Penis Blogging Week

In which kind internet folks and a combination of curiousity and ADD lead our intrepid author to learn about cephalopod sex, swimming detachable (I assume only once....) penises, squid sneaker sex, three other normal squid sex types (with distribution chart!), penis evolution, rat penises, duck penises, penises with spines, penis size, plural penises (penes is also acceptable, but doesn't have quite the same ring), missing penises, squid porn (they don't call it that, but we recognize it when we see it, don't we? Squids having sex, right there on the internets!) and grasshopper porn. With plenty of parenthetical asides along the way.

All from the Penis Blog Ring! (OK, not really)

As you may know, last Friday was Cephaloblog Friday, and my Cephalopod post started because of a NYT article about octopus arms, which led to a Wikipedia article about cephalopods that included this:

"some octopuses can detach and autonomise their limbs, in a similar manner to skinks and other lizards. The crawling arm serves as a distraction to would-be predators; this ability is also used in mating."

I cried out to the internet for help, asking any Cephalogeeks to elaborate if they could. Continue below the fold to learn the rest of the sordid squid sloppy sex story, learn of the Kama Sutra of squid intercourse, and of course hear about Penis Blogging Week, which is connected in many ways to squid, even though they don't have penises.

Jaarons of Squidblog rose to the challenge (sorry, I'll try to avoid any more of the obvious puns from here on), with an entry on not only Detachable Penises, but a further entry on Squid Sex (I gotta say that if anyone arrives here by searching for "squid sex" I'm going to be a little disturbed and a little curious) with pictures of squid DOING IT.

Squidblog consulted Pharyngula's post on Tentacle Sex and learned that "Male squid do not have a penis...they have a specially modified tentacle, the hectocotylus." This non-penis penis is used to scoop sperm from the male's spermatophore storage pouch "and place it inside the buccal or mantle cavity of the female." "...In some cephalopods, the end of the hectocotylus snaps off and remains imbedded in the female."

Here's the answer to my question: "The male paper nautilus (and here)" uses his detachable autonomisable limb system to overcome his need for 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."

As we learned last week from Wikipedia, "reproduction is a cause of death; males can only live for a few months after mating" (well of course! He's sad - he's lost his penis!) so the ocean is not full of swimming squid penises, and the paper nautilus doesn't send it out and then retrieve it, or have it returned. David Brin wrote a novel about a culture that was shaped by males who came into season once per year, and were uninterested in sex otherwise. Imagine what would happen to our society if human penises were detachable! Think of the product opportunities: carrying cases, those clap things so if you misplaced it you could clap and have it beep for you, etc. As long as we didn't have to die after they were used.

I'd heard of Pharyngula, but never visited. It's so wonderful that I felt a sinking feeling as I realized how much time I'm going to spend there. All science-related content, very well written by someone with a great sense of humor, although perhaps a little jaded about penises, as we shall see.

Spermatophore are described as being "like those joke peanut cans that fling out a springy surprise when opened. Squid sex is a process of passing one of these clever novelty items to a female, where it will then go sproing when she lays some eggs."

Squid sex is beautifully described thus:

the body poetry of affectionate squid involves "rigid arms", "upward curls", and "peristaltic arm flares" while displaying "golden epaulettes" or "stitchwork fins" or "iridiscent sclera". It's lovely stuff. It makes my habit of picking out a clean shirt before going out on a date look rather pathetic—I'd have to take up ballet and gymnastics and start wearing luminescent make-up and glo-tubes if I want to keep up.

A descriptive scientific paper about squid reproduction becomes "more of a Kama Sutra of squid intercourse," where we learn that:

Squid have a preferred position, illustrated below, in which the male swims upside-down above the female, and deftly scoops out a spermatophore which he deposits in the females buccal cavity, while the male is flashing "mantle margin stripe", "dark arm stripes", and "fin stripes", and she is showing off "white dorsal stripes", "golden epaulettes", and "rigid arms".

Here is their interesting chart of squids' perferred sex positions, where we learn about sloppy squid sneaker sex:

"...a male would coast up to a courting pair and attempt to flick in one of his spermatophores. Sometimes, while the sneaker was trying to make his deposit, he'd display the typical paired female body patterns of "dorsal white stripe", "golden epaulettes", and "rigid arms"; the females did not seem to appreciate these devious intrusions, and would most often jet away. The sneaker males were not only unpopular, but sloppy, and would splatter spermatophores onto the female's head, arms, or mantle."

This is where the squid sex pictures are. If that's why you are here, you can just leave now and head over there to see 'em. I'm not going to use my precious bandwidth posting them here, in part because they aren't very good pics - they look like  1930's porn scans of a black and white scientific magazine, which is probably what they are. You can't even see the little penis swimming towards the female. What's the point?

After absorbing all I could hold about squid sex, I see in their "Recent Posts" section the title Penis Evolution from February 26th, which contains these key points:

"every time they [penises] have evolved, they converge on a remarkably similar morphological solution...Every amniote settles on a similar solution, forming a hydrostat, a tube containing a pressurized incompressible fluid surrounded by a membrane under tension. It's a kind of glorified water balloon."

"one of the striking things about this pattern is how lineages, such as the birds, can so blithely lose their intromittent organ...it hasn't been at all uncommon for female vertebrates to be untroubled by the absence of a penis in their mates, and apparently have preferred it that way."

See? Too much science can make you jaded.

Of course, a lively comment-response round ensues, leading to archy, who is not jaded, at least about penises with bones: "Yes, some mammals have penis bones. I assume the adaptation is for speed. The penis bone is kept in the abdomen and, when needed, a set of muscles push it into a sheath in the fleshy part of the penis." He posted a picture of a gavel his father had owned, with the handle made of "an oosik, a walrus or seal penis bone."

See, science and vocabulary! Oosik, hectocotylus.

You're almost done. First, Penis Blogging Week (with a whole slew of links), although, yes, it is something less than a declaration. It's an offhand reference, OK, but that should be enough. One of the links is to Beth, who also refers to Penis Blogging Day, and a commenter then refers to making it a week. But that explains why the penis posts are clustered over a two week period: the announcement wasn't made very well, and so the awareness of the week is only seeping out. Who's in charge of Penis Blogging Week?

Cgurl's Sex!?! has the history of sex toys, broken up into two entries: "The Early Years" and "1800 to Today"

Also, Thoughts from Kansas, where we are treated to drawings of penises of rodents, and this nugget of wisdom: "The spines may simply provide extra traction." "Extra" traction. Think about that. Then see the Kansas native "Grasshopper Porn!"

At Velociworld, in "Tapiring Off," Velociman said "The bull tapir had an organ that was so prodigious it dragged the ground. Not only that, it had three splines, or outgrowths, that made it resemble some sort of medieval weapon, like a morning star or something."

To return to our beginning, and to join once again the squid theme with the penis theme, especially for those who've been waiting for the obligatory Giant Squid reference, we turn once again to Squidblog:

Some small squid will use their sharp beaks or tentacle hooks to rip open the skin of females. They then insert spermatophores with their penises. In the giant squid, however, the male's penis is formidable, muscular, and almost a meter long. It is powerful enough to insert spermatophores directly under the skin of the females. The males are not always accurate, for males themselves are sometimes impregnated in this manner during the squids' deep-sea orgies.

Finally, I learned today from my search logs that the Laughing Squid underground art web hosting service has a blog called Cephaloblog! On the same day that Squidblog answered my Cephaloblogging Friday question! There's some kinda giant-squid-penis-synchronicity thing going, don't you think?

(I just blew any little shred of science-geek cred I had managed to hold onto for this long)