Spiders dodge cannibalism through remote copulation That’s a whole new meaning to “absentee father”. Put yourself in a scenario. You get to have sex one time, and if you stick around too long you’ll get eaten. You want to make that one time count, and you’d also like to make sure that no one else got the opportunity to reproduce with your chosen lady. Solution? If you’re an orb-web spider, it appears that breaking off your penis inside of the female and running away is just what Dr. Evolution ordered. It saves his legs, it prevents other males from copulating, and it allows him to fight to protect her. Even if she does want to eat him in the first place. How romantic. Violent mating behaviors are actually rather common. Hermaphroditic flatworms engage in “penis fencing” to decide who will be the mother and who will be the father of their offspring. Honeybees’ genitals explode and break off inside the queen in a manner similar to the spider. Bedbugs simply impale the female with their penises and deposit sperm through the opening. And banana slugs have such large penises that if they freak out the female with one too large, they risk getting their organ chewed off. (via Nature News)
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Spiders dodge cannibalism through remote copulation

That’s a whole new meaning to “absentee father”. Put yourself in a scenario. You get to have sex one time, and if you stick around too long you’ll get eaten. You want to make that one time count, and you’d also like to make sure that no one else got the opportunity to reproduce with your chosen lady.

Solution? If you’re an orb-web spider, it appears that breaking off your penis inside of the female and running away is just what Dr. Evolution ordered. It saves his legs, it prevents other males from copulating, and it allows him to fight to protect her. Even if she does want to eat him in the first place. How romantic.

Violent mating behaviors are actually rather common. Hermaphroditic flatworms engage in “penis fencing” to decide who will be the mother and who will be the father of their offspring. Honeybees’ genitals explode and break off inside the queen in a manner similar to the spider. Bedbugs simply impale the female with their penises and deposit sperm through the opening. And banana slugs have such large penises that if they freak out the female with one too large, they risk getting their organ chewed off.

(via Nature News)

Source: nature.com

Stem Cells Build a Better Rat Penis Do you need an improved penis? Are you a rat? Then you’re in luck, thanks to a new adult stem cell therapy in the works. In all seriousness, penile reconstruction is a serious need and a very challenging medical issue. This is very cool news: Men with penis injuries, deformities, or severe Peyronie’s disease—which causes excessive scarring that can curve or shrink the penis—sometimes need surgery to reconstruct their genitalia and restore their sexual function. Many receive a graft made of their own tissue, cadaver tissue, or pig intestines, but the surgery can cause complications, including erectile dysfunction. … The team seeded pig intestine grafts with adult stem cells taken from fat tissue in rats. Because rats don’t develop Peyronie’s disease, the researchers had to induce scarring by making incisions in the rodent penises. They then operated on the scarred rats, removing part of the scar tissue and supplanting it with a graft, as is done in patients with severe Peyronie’s disease. And in even better news, they were fully functional (read: erections)! Considering that Peyronie’s disease affects as many as 9% of males, this is real stem cell progress. (via ScienceNOW)
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Stem Cells Build a Better Rat Penis

Do you need an improved penis? Are you a rat? Then you’re in luck, thanks to a new adult stem cell therapy in the works.

In all seriousness, penile reconstruction is a serious need and a very challenging medical issue. This is very cool news:

Men with penis injuries, deformities, or severe Peyronie’s disease—which causes excessive scarring that can curve or shrink the penis—sometimes need surgery to reconstruct their genitalia and restore their sexual function. Many receive a graft made of their own tissue, cadaver tissue, or pig intestines, but the surgery can cause complications, including erectile dysfunction.

… The team seeded pig intestine grafts with adult stem cells taken from fat tissue in rats. Because rats don’t develop Peyronie’s disease, the researchers had to induce scarring by making incisions in the rodent penises. They then operated on the scarred rats, removing part of the scar tissue and supplanting it with a graft, as is done in patients with severe Peyronie’s disease.

And in even better news, they were fully functional (read: erections)! Considering that Peyronie’s disease affects as many as 9% of males, this is real stem cell progress.

(via ScienceNOW)

Source: news.sciencemag.org