Wired posts Amy Wallace love/hate mail compiled from Twitter feed [Terra Sigillata]
Just a quick follow-up from our last two posts about Amy Wallace's article, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," in Wired magazine about vaccine developer Dr Paul Offit and the anti-vaccination movement:
Wired has now compiled Wallace's tweets from the last two days into blog-readable narrative.
Only a week after Wired published "An Epidemic of Fear", we've received more reader responses than any other story in memory. Journalist Amy Wallace has received hundreds of messages, weighing in on all sides of the issue, and posted some of those comments on her Twitter feed.
Readers Respond to "An Epidemic of Fear," Part 1
Readers Respond to "An Epidemic of Fear," part 2
To be fair, putting Amy's tweets together was originally the idea of Sydney-based IT blogger, Bastard Sheep (part 1, part 2; the illegitimate sheep also twitpic'd last night a screen shot of his blog traffic before and after these posts).
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Eye of the Beholder [The Primate Diaries]
As a species we are consumed by love. Ask yourself, how many cultural productions (films, stories, songs, dances, arts) do not have love, the loss of love or the absence of love as their central theme? Would you be satisfied with what was left over? That fact that love has so much power over us is just one reason why evolutionary research is so fascinating.
A well-worn trope of human culture is mens obsession with female infidelity. Othello. Madame Bovary. Desperate Housewives. These are just three Western examples of this concern that are paralleled in nearly every society throughout time. Such powerful and universal human emotions suggest a biological commonality that can be revealed through a scientific lens.
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Wednesday Whatzits: Mayon and Kilauea [Eruptions]
I'll be giving a talk this afternoon here at Denison on rhyolite generation, so I might be a little brief this morning.
Undated image of Mayon in the Philippines.
- The province of Albay in the Philippines is on alert for both a typhoon and a volcano (that country seems to be hit with that double whammy quite often). Over 300,000 may need to be ready to evacuate if the volcano continues to show signs that it might erupt - in fact, Mayon is producing ash as of this morning, albeit only one minor ash explosion.
- Lava flows from Kilauea are drawing crowds as they inundate a road in Kalapana. There is a nice video link to the gawkers watching the lava ooze its way across the access road (very very slowly). The lava flow seemed to have stopped after crossing the road, but now it appears to be continuing to head to the sea.
- Lastly, the NASA Earth Observatory has posted a couple new images worth a peak: one is of the current plume at Chaiten in Chile, the other of the activity at Shiveluch in Russia. Read the comments on this post...
What Does Arab Racism Look Like? [The Primate Diaries]
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Holy fellatio, Batman! Fruit bats use oral sex to prolong actual sex [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
Many humans whinge about not getting oral sex often enough, but for most animals, it's completely non-existent. In fact, we know of only animal apart from humans to regularly engage in fellatio - the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx).
The bat's sexual antics have only just been recorded by Min Tan of China's Guangdong Entomological Institute (who are either branching out, or are confused about entomology). Tan captured 60 wild bats from a nearby park, housed them in pairs of the opposite sex and voyeuristically filmed their liaisons using a night-time camera. Twenty of the bats got busy, and their exploits were all caught on video.
Male bats create tents by biting leaves until they fall into shape. These provide shelter and double as harems, each housing several females who the male mates with. Fruit bat sex goes like this: the female approaches and sniffs the male, and both partners start to lick one another. The male makes approaches with his thumbs (like the Fonz) and mounts the female (like the Fonz). Sex itself is the typical rhythmic thrusting that we're used to, and afterwards, the male licks his own penis for several seconds.
But Tan also found that female bat will often bend down to lick the shaft of her mate's penis during sex itself. This behaviour happened on 70% of the videos, making it the only known example of regular fellatio in a non-human animal. It also prolonged the sexual encounter - males never withdrew their penises when they were being licked and, on average, the behaviour bought the couple an extra 100 seconds of sex over and above the usual 2 minutes. The licking itself only lasted for 20 seconds on average, so each second of it buys six extra seconds of penetration.
NSFW - short-nosed fruit bats having sex. I will have you know that the music choice came with the video and has nothing to do with me.
Oral sex is rare in other animals. Bonobos do it (but really, what don't they do?) but it's more of a form of play among young males, and there's one anecdotal instance of an orang-utan doing the same. Some animals, such as ring-tailed lemurs, lick each other's genitals to judge whether they're ready for mating, but there's no evidence that they do so as an actual part of sex. As for other bats, it's entirely possible that they too engage in oral sex. However, given their inaccessible roosts and nocturnal habits, we're largely in their dark about their sex lives.
Nonetheless, Tan suggests a few possible reasons for the short-nosed fruit bat's penchant for fellatio, aside from the anthropocentric conclusion of 'pleasure-giving'. Bat penises contain erectile tissue much like our own. It gets stiffer if it's stimulated, so females could use oral sex to prolong their encounters with males, by maintain their erections or lubricating it for easier entry.
While many of us might nod sagely at the need for longer sex, Tan suggests that for the bats, it could mean easier transport of sperm to the oviduct, or more secretions from the female that are conducive to fertilisation. It could also be a way of hogging a mate, keeping him away from rival females.
Alternatively, the antiseptic properties of saliva might help to strip the male's penis of bacteria or fungi, and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The fact that males lick their own penises after sex supports this idea.
And finally, oral sex might help females to pick up chemical traces on her mate that might suggest if he's a suitable mate. Obviously, they'd already be having sex, but female mammals often exert choice over their sexual partners after the fact, rejecting sperm from inferior males, or encouraging congress with superior ones to displace it. All of these explanations are just hypotheses for the moment, but they could all be tested in the future.
Reference: Tan, M., Jones, G., Zhu, G., Ye, J., Hong, T., Zhou, S., Zhang, S., & Zhang, L. (2009). Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time PLoS ONE, 4 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007595
More on animal sex:
- Clock gene and moonlight help corals to co-ordinate a mass annual orgy
- Frigid echidna sex - competition drives males to mate with hibernating females
- Traumatic insemination - male spider pierces female's underside with needle-sharp penis
- Male chimps trade meat for sex
- Horrific beetle sex - why the most successful males have the spikiest penises
- Mosquitoes harmonise their buzzing in love duets
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U.S. envoys in Honduras to pressure sides over crisis (Reuters)
TEGUCIGALPA, Oct. 28, 2009 (Reuters) -- An emergency delegation of senior U.S. government officials arrived in Honduras on Wednesday for a last-ditch effort to resolve an impasse between ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the country's de facto leaders since a June coup. ... > read full story
House Democrats close in on healthcare bill (Reuters)
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2009 (Reuters) -- Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have nearly finished a sweeping healthcare reform bill that would include a government-run insurance option and hope to unveil it on Thursday. ... > read full story
Senators eye extending home credit to end-April: sources (Reuters)
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2009 (Reuters) -- A popular U.S. tax credit for first-time homebuyers would be extended until the end of April and expanded to cover repeat buyers under a deal reached by key senators, sources familiar with the plan said on Wednesday. ... > read full story
WHO chief says Fidel Castro "looks wonderful" (Reuters)
HAVANA, Oct. 28, 2009 (Reuters) -- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro "looks wonderful," World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan said on Wednesday, after meeting the 83-year-old who resigned the presidency last year due to ailing health. ... > read full story
Car bomb kills 90 in Pakistan as Hillary Clinton visits (Reuters)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 28, 2009 (Reuters) -- A car bomb ripped through a crowded market killing 90 people in Pakistan's city of Peshawar on Wednesday, just hours after Washington's top diplomat arrived pledging a fresh start in sometimes strained relations. ... > read full story