Read Online Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? by Mark Leyner - Free Book Online Page B

don’t take it personally either way. The carbon dioxide released when we exhale is an extremely important attractant, as is the lactic acid produced by muscle movement, as is moist skin and a warm body. Sebum, eccrine, and apocrine secretions—basically, sweat—are also major chemoattractants for these annoying creatures. And mosquitos have a yen for heavily scented grooming products—particularly floral fragrances in perfumes, aftershaves, soaps, lotions, and hair-care products.
    Short of not emitting carbon dioxide, lactic acid, or heat—in other words, not moving or breathing, which might also mean you’re dead—the only way you ensure that you’re “sour” to a mosquito is probably to use repellent.
    WHY ARE BUGS ATTRACTED TO LIGHT?
    Phototaxis is an organism’s automatic movement toward or away from light. Cockroaches are negatively phototactic. Turn on that kitchen light and off they scurry to their dark little holes. But many insects are positively phototactic—as evidenced by the mass bug graves in your light fixtures. Many people are also phototactic, especially for the “limelight”—those of us who secretly crave the strobe fusillade of paparazzi flashbulbs and murmur, “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up” in our dreams…. But, back to bugs. There are a variety of reasons that various insects are positively phototactic. Many insects, including bees, orient themselves in relation to the sun. Certain nocturnal bugs—moths, for instance—use moonlight to navigate, flying at a certain angle to the moon’s light rays to maintain a straight trajectory. When it approaches a source closer than the moon—say, a lightbulb—a moth perceives the light as stronger in one eye than the other, causing one wing to beat faster, so it flies in a tightening spiral, ever closer to the light. Some bugs are sensitive to ultraviolet light reflected by flowers at night. Artificial lights that emit UV rays will also be attractive to these guys. Other bugs are drawn to the heat that incandescent bulbs produce at night. Fireflies are bugs and bulbs all in one. They use their bioluminescence to attract each other.
    DO BEES DIE AFTER THEY STING YOU?
    Only honeybees die after stinging, but not bumblebees or wasps. A honeybee’s barbed stinger is actually attached to its abdomen. When this stinger lodges in the flesh, and the bee tries to escape, the stinger is ripped from its body, tearing off most of the bee’s belly (along with a nerve ganglion, various muscles, a venom sac, and the end of its digestive tract), and the bee dies of the injuries.
    Although the self-inflicted fatality of the honeybee’s sting lacks the individual consciousness and premeditation to truly be considered kamikazelike, you still have to admire that take-one-for-the-hive esprit de corps.
    And research also indicates that it’s only in old cartoons that bees chase you around the countryside, their swarm taking the shape of a harpoon or large pub dart.
    IS IT TRUE THAT SHARKS HAVE TO KEEP SWIMMING TO STAY ALIVE?
    Sharks do not have “swim bladders”—the gas-filled balloonlike organ that enable most fish to stay afloat and upright in water. This means that, since a shark’s body is heavier than water, it will indeed sink when not swimming. Some sharks, including great whites and hammerheads, actually have to keep swimming to breathe. They need to constantly move forward in order to pass oxygen-bearing water over their gills—a process called obligate ramjet ventilation. But there are many species of shark that do not have to swim to breathe. Other common misconceptions about sharks are that they don’t have eyelids and never sleep. Fish have no eyelids, but sharks actually have elaborate eyelids and some even have an additional, protective eyelid called a nictitating membrane. There is some debate among marine biologists as to whether sharks actually sleep or not, but most think that sharks do slow down their brain functions from