Read Online The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design by Wendy Northcutt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wendy Northcutt
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boat. Wanting to be comfortable, and not having the money for a real bass boat, these two dim bulbs decided to put a couple of La-Z-Boy recliners on their skiff. They must have barely had enough room left for their supply of beer. Needless to say, they both decided to recline at the same time, and you can figure out the rest of the story.
My son said that he and the rest of the rescue team were laughing so hard that they could hardly do their job.
Reference: Mark Goecke, Personal Account
CHAPTER 3
Women
Few women win Darwin Awards, but this book is lucky enough to have a strong selection of female applicants. We have a spy, two explosions, pilot sex and street sex, a desperate smoker, a gymnast, an amateur mechanic, and a thief. We also have a Jet Ski, a hurricane, a raging river, a roller coaster, gasoline, and an aerosol can. But first, an essay on the damage that females do to their mates….
D ISCUSSION : L OVE B ITES
Annaliese Beery, Science Writer
W hen humans get themselves killed in creative ways, they are usually considered unfit individuals. But for some species, self-sacrifice of the ultimate kind is a common, adaptive part of mating. The process is called sexual cannibalism, and it’s every bit as gory as it sounds.
You probably know that black widow females sometimes consume their mates (along with 95 percent of their young) and many species, from crickets to scorpions, indulge similarly cannibalistic appetites after sex. One fly, Serromyia femorata, administers a death kiss, sucking the body of her mate through his mouth as a post-copulatory snack. But the masochism prize in the mating game goes to the suitor of another poisonous widow, the Australian redback spider Lactodectus hasselti . He actually tries to feed himself to his partner.
Before mating can begin, the male redback spider must go through a few preparations. First he spins a special web and deposits sperm on it. Then he sucks the sperm packets into his pedipalps, two appendages on the front of his head that he might otherwise use to hold food. Once he’s primed and ready, this inconspicuous brown male searches for the rare web containing the irresistible black and red female, who is fifty times his weight.
The drama begins in the standard spider mating position: He stands on her large abdomen and inserts a palp into one of her genital openings. But then the redback male does something different. He uses his palp as a pivot to somersault 180 degrees and land on the female’s jaws. The female may then pierce his abdomen and inject enzymes, beginning the digestion process. The male is ready for this outcome—he hopes for it—and his abdomen is compartmentalized to slow his demise. Often he will manage to insert his other palp in her second genital opening, then leap into her jaws again. Eventually he is devoured, mating all the while. If he survives his daring leaps, it is only because the female isn’t hungry. (She is typically ravenous.)
Other male widow spiders don’t feed themselves to their mates. So what drives the male redback to such lengths? In the lingo of evolutionary biologists, “What’s in it for him?” Scientist Maydianne Andrade of the University of Toronto performed an experiment to find out: She mated redback spiders in the lab and determined how many eggs males fertilized when they were eaten—or spared. After a first pairing the females were allowed to mate again. Dr. Andrade found that when the first male was eaten, the female mated with him for twice as long (while eating him), and the “male meal” fertilized roughly twice as many eggs as an uneaten male. She was also much less likely to mate again with a second male. The male fertilizes more eggs, which is the goal.
But is it worth it for a male to lose the chance to mate again? For the male redback spider, the answer is yes. He only lives eight weeks, compared to the female redback’s two-yearlifespan. Only 20
My son said that he and the rest of the rescue team were laughing so hard that they could hardly do their job.
Reference: Mark Goecke, Personal Account
CHAPTER 3
Women
Few women win Darwin Awards, but this book is lucky enough to have a strong selection of female applicants. We have a spy, two explosions, pilot sex and street sex, a desperate smoker, a gymnast, an amateur mechanic, and a thief. We also have a Jet Ski, a hurricane, a raging river, a roller coaster, gasoline, and an aerosol can. But first, an essay on the damage that females do to their mates….
D ISCUSSION : L OVE B ITES
Annaliese Beery, Science Writer
W hen humans get themselves killed in creative ways, they are usually considered unfit individuals. But for some species, self-sacrifice of the ultimate kind is a common, adaptive part of mating. The process is called sexual cannibalism, and it’s every bit as gory as it sounds.
You probably know that black widow females sometimes consume their mates (along with 95 percent of their young) and many species, from crickets to scorpions, indulge similarly cannibalistic appetites after sex. One fly, Serromyia femorata, administers a death kiss, sucking the body of her mate through his mouth as a post-copulatory snack. But the masochism prize in the mating game goes to the suitor of another poisonous widow, the Australian redback spider Lactodectus hasselti . He actually tries to feed himself to his partner.
Before mating can begin, the male redback spider must go through a few preparations. First he spins a special web and deposits sperm on it. Then he sucks the sperm packets into his pedipalps, two appendages on the front of his head that he might otherwise use to hold food. Once he’s primed and ready, this inconspicuous brown male searches for the rare web containing the irresistible black and red female, who is fifty times his weight.
The drama begins in the standard spider mating position: He stands on her large abdomen and inserts a palp into one of her genital openings. But then the redback male does something different. He uses his palp as a pivot to somersault 180 degrees and land on the female’s jaws. The female may then pierce his abdomen and inject enzymes, beginning the digestion process. The male is ready for this outcome—he hopes for it—and his abdomen is compartmentalized to slow his demise. Often he will manage to insert his other palp in her second genital opening, then leap into her jaws again. Eventually he is devoured, mating all the while. If he survives his daring leaps, it is only because the female isn’t hungry. (She is typically ravenous.)
Other male widow spiders don’t feed themselves to their mates. So what drives the male redback to such lengths? In the lingo of evolutionary biologists, “What’s in it for him?” Scientist Maydianne Andrade of the University of Toronto performed an experiment to find out: She mated redback spiders in the lab and determined how many eggs males fertilized when they were eaten—or spared. After a first pairing the females were allowed to mate again. Dr. Andrade found that when the first male was eaten, the female mated with him for twice as long (while eating him), and the “male meal” fertilized roughly twice as many eggs as an uneaten male. She was also much less likely to mate again with a second male. The male fertilizes more eggs, which is the goal.
But is it worth it for a male to lose the chance to mate again? For the male redback spider, the answer is yes. He only lives eight weeks, compared to the female redback’s two-yearlifespan. Only 20
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