Yes, that's a beetle penis, and it's part of the cringe-inducing phenomenon known as "sexually antagonistic co-evolution." Cosmos reports:
Male seed beetles have spectacularly harmful penises covered in sharp spikes. These help the male's chances of fertilizing the eggs by providing an anchor, but can also pierce the female during sex, causing injury.
For seed beetles – a group of insects consisting of many species that infest beans or seeds – the battle of the sexes is not a psychological game played out in the home, it's a deadly serious evolutionary arms race, according to a new study. . . .
They found that in species where males have the spikiest penises, the females had more padding in their reproductive tracts. According to the researchers, the spiky male genitalia are less damaging to females with more padding, which results in those females surviving and producing more offspring.
Ack. By which I mean yuck.
Posted by: Ana | June 12, 2007 at 08:34 AM
Yuck. By which I mean, well, yuck.
Posted by: CGHill | June 12, 2007 at 08:10 PM
You mean ... that this thing isn't ... uh, normal?
Jeffery Hodges
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Posted by: Horace Jeffery Hodges | June 13, 2007 at 03:10 AM