Scientists didn’t have a good idea about how the cephalopods – octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish – of the deep get in on. The problem is in the way the body is set up. Most of what appears to be the body and head of, say a squid, is actually a hood, called a mantle. They use the mantle both to move through the water and to force water across their gills by forcing water out of the bottom, like jet propulsion. But that also means that their sex organs are protected inside.

That makes a pretty big problem for the dudes. How do they get their sperm past the female’s mantle? If they spray some sperm up in there, it won’t stick around long since it will get washed out as she propels all that seawater through her mantle.

Shallow-water dwelling cephalopods have figured out a solution. They have short penises which produce small “packets” of sperm called spermatophores. One of their eight eponymous limbs is actually modified to transfer this sperm into the proper receptacle on the female cephalopod.

But scientists still had no good idea how their deeper-dwelling cousins got the job done. Deep-water male squid are known to use a more primitive method, which involves somehow injecting their sperm into the female’s body. But how? “Obviously a strongly elongated penis is the solution,” says Dr Arkhipkin of the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department, who explains how he and his colleagues made the discovery:

“The mature male squid was caught during a deep-water research cruise on the Patagonian slope. We took the animal from the catch, and it was moribund with arms and tentacles still moving, and chromatophores on the skin contracting and expanding,” he told the BBC.

“When the mantle of the squid was opened for maturity assessment, we witnessed an unusual event.

“The penis of the squid, which had extended only slightly over the mantle margin, suddenly started to erect, and elongated quickly to 67cm total length, almost the same length as the whole animal.”

…

The squid uses its lengthy organ to reach into the body of the female, and it then injects the sperm directly to prevent it being washed away.

How the sperm injected into a female’s body then reaches her reproductive organs remains a mystery.

Male with erect penis and ejaculated spermatophores on table (penis is white tubular structure in lower half of the picture).

I’m not really sure what the moral of this story is. But next time someone calls me a squidfucker, I will take it as a compliment.

Signing off, polyps. Remember! You don’t know Dick.
…But don’t worry. We’re here to help you.


Information and photo from BBC Earth News.

Dick Feynman (@feynmandick) is a Los Angeles-based scientist, specializing in diluting scientific research findings into tasty, bite-sized bacon-flavored snacks for the unwashed masses.

We here at Sex and the 405 think that science is totally hot and sexy. As such, we endeavor to bring you every opportunity we can for you to participate in sexy science yourself.

We’re cool like that.

So, get this: researchers at McGill University are studying male genital self-perceptions.

The purpose of this study is to better understand how men evaluate certain features of their genitals, and the factors that influence this perception. It is hoped that better understanding of male genital image concerns and the factors involved may improve body image treatment in the future.

This seems like pretty important research to us, so we hope you’ll participate. Plus, when the instructions include the line “you will need to measure the length and girth of your flaccid AND erect penis before completing this survey,” well, how could we NOT encourage participation?

Find the survey here.

As in sex, consent is crucial in human subjects research. Please participate responsibly – be sure to read the entire consent form before proceeding.

Photo by flickr user iliahi.

Dick Feynman (@feynmandick) is a Los Angeles-based scientist, specializing in diluting scientific research findings into tasty, bite-sized bacon-flavored snacks for the unwashed masses.

A common superstition among strippers is that earnings are directly related to their menstrual cycles.

When they’re ovulating, the theory goes, they make more money.

Well, guess what?

There may be some truth to that.

Research conducted by Geoffrey Miller, Joshua M. Tybur and Brent D. Jordan at the department of psychology at the University of New Mexico surveying the earnings and cycles of 18 dancers over 60 days found that there was an interaction between the phase of a dancer’s cycle and her earnings:

Earning average per five-hour period:

• During estrus: $335
• During luteal phase: $260
• During menstruation: $185

Participants using contraceptive pills showed no estrous earnings peak.

“These results constitute the first direct economic evidence for the existence and importance of estrus in contemporary human females, in a real-world work setting,” the researchers stated. “These results have clear implications for human evolution, sexuality, and economics.”

Indeed!

Photo by Nicole Faraday (damn, that girl can hustle!). Information from Discoblog, via Dick Feynman.

Are humans the only species that masturbates? Well, yes and no. We may not be the only species that likes to play with ourselves, but we appear to be the only species that does it for the explicit purpose of cumming. And we do it A LOT.

Scientific American blogger Jesse Bering tells us:

In a now-classic, pre-Internet-porn study (PDF) by British evolutionary biologists Robin Baker and Mark Bellis, male university students were found to masturbate to ejaculation about every 72 hours, and “on the majority of occasions, their last masturbation is within 48 hours of their next in-pair copulation.” If they’re not having intercourse every day, that is to say, men tend to pleasure themselves to completion no more than two days prior to having actual sex.

Any casual visitor to the zoo has probably seen monkeys pleasuring themselves, though. Right? Well, maybe. But again, not to completion, and this has only reliably been seen with captive individuals, in research labs or zoos for example. Not in the wild:

In a 1983 study from the International Journal of Primatology, the sexual behaviors of several groups of wild gray-cheeked mangabeys were observed for over 22 months in the Kibale Forest of Western Uganda. There was plenty of sex, particularly during the females’ peak swellings. But just two incidents of male masturbation leading to ejaculation were observed. Yes, that’s right. Whereas healthy human males can’t seem to go without masturbating for longer than 72 hours, two measly cases of masturbating mangabeys were observed over a nearly two-year period.

University College London anthropologist E.D. Starin didn’t have much luck spying incidents of masturbation in red colobus monkeys in Gambia, either. In a brief 2004 article published in Folia Primatologica, Starin reports that over a 5.5-year period of accumulated observations totaling more than 9,500 hours, she saw only 5–count ‘em, five, incidents of her population of five male colobus monkeys masturbating to ejaculation, and these rare incidents occurred only when nearby sexually receptive females were exhibiting loud courtship displays and copulations with other males.

So why don’t other species get themselves off like we do?

Bering thinks it has to do with the fact that we can imagine. That’s right. We can conjure up wild, steamy, erotic, orgasm-inducing scenarios full of friends, lovers, acquaintances, Marisa Miller, AV Flox, Dick Feynman, the toaster (hey, people have strange fantasies and we support it), or people we’ve never even met. We can visualize them in our mind and we can imagine how they would feel and taste.

Go home tonight and just TRY to masturbate successfully without having some sort of mental imagery playing out in your mind’s eye. Think only of pure whiteness. If you come back and tell me you can do it, well, you’re lying. In fact, the ability to dream up those delicious fantasies may be the thing that allows for masturbation in the first place.

And so I’m left wondering … in a world where sexual fantasy in the form of mental representation has become obsolete, where hallucinatory images of dancing genitalia, lusty lesbians and sadomasochistic strangers have been replaced by a veritable online smorgasbord of real people doing things our grandparents couldn’t have dreamt up even in their wettest of dreams, where randy teenagers no longer close their eyes and lose themselves to the oblivion and bliss but instead crack open their thousand-dollar laptops and conjure up a real live porn actress, what, in a general sense, are the consequences of liquidating our erotic mental representational skills for our species’ sexuality? Is the next generation going to be so intellectually lazy in their sexual fantasies that their creativity in other domains is also affected? Will their marriages be more likely to end because they lack the representational experience and masturbatory fantasy training to picture their husbands and wives during intercourse as the person or thing they really desire?

We here at Sex and the 405 certainly hope not. That would suck. And not in a good way. Mmmmmmm. Sucking. You’ll have to excuse us while we, er, address our own mental imagery.

Signing off, polyps. Remember! You don’t know Dick.
…But don’t worry. We’re here to help you.


Information from Scientific American Blogs.

Dick Feynman (@feynmandick) is a Los Angeles-based scientist, specializing in diluting scientific research findings into tasty, bite-sized bacon-flavored snacks for the unwashed masses.

Our fearless editrix finds herself this evening pacing about the Sex and the 405 newsroom (naked, of course) bemoaning the lack of white bread to be found in California. But fear not, for while the rest of the staff attempts to distract her with Star Wars porn, I am here to educate and entertain.

Introducing: A ball sack for your ball sack. A sling for your thing. A sock for your cock. A thong for your dong.

According to Scicurious at Neurotopia:

For many years now, scientists have been trying to come up with a reliable form of male contraceptive that…isn’t a condom. There’s a lot of burden on women when it comes to contraception (in terms of the pill, the ring, the patch, etc), and so for a while scientists have been looking for a way to give men more of an equal say. But hormones don’t appear to work very well.

So what did the scientists do? Polyester underpants. And they made the guys wear them for a whole year (the editrix pipes up: “ew, did they wear them during sex?!” we hope so.) Apparently sperm are sensitive to polyester, but not cotton. And not only that, research had shown that men who wore polyester underpants had lower sperm counts than those who prefer their testicles to be enshrined behind other materials. Scicurious continues:

So one of the ways in which polyester might work to reduce sperm count would be by causing it to be too warm, and thus making it difficult for sperm to mature. And having your balls too warm is probably a better contraceptive option compared to sitting on ice to send your balls in the other direction.

The other reason, however, is a bit more odd: electrostatic charge. Apparently polyester rubbing up against the skin produces an electrostatic charge which could somehow prevent sperm maturation.

And not only that! They did this to dogs also. And the dogs wore them for two years. According to blogger Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal:

For the polyester group, there were no real changes in testicular temperature. But there was a significant decrease in sperm count and in motile sperms, which are sperms that are good swimmers. The Michael Phelpses of the sperm-o-sphere. There was also a significant increase in abnormal sperm count. There were small but statistically insignificant changes in hormones during the experiment. The testicular biopsy showed degeneration in the seminiferous tubules. After the underwear was removed, sperm counts reached pre-experimental levels by the eleventh month in ten of the twelve dogs in that group.

For both the cotton group as well as the control group, there were no changes in any of the measured variables throughout the entire three years of the experiment.

… We thought polyester shirts were a pretty effective contraceptive to begin with. Right?


Signing off, polyps. Remember! You don’t know Dick.
…But don’t worry. We’re here to help you.


LEGAL: We here at Sex and the 405 hereby absolve ourselves of all liability from attempts to create an electrostatic potential across your, or your partner’s, testicles.

Image from: Shafik, A. (1992). Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men Contraception, 45 (5), 439-451 DOI: 10.1016/0010-7824(92)90157-O via Neurotopia. Information from Scienceblogs.

Dick Feynman (@feynmandick) is a Los Angeles-based scientist, specializing in diluting scientific research findings into tasty, bite-sized bacon-flavored snacks for the unwashed masses.

Kissing rocks, bottom line. Today, it’s largely considered a sign of affection and/or desire in about 90 percent of the world. We know this — and if we don’t know, we suspect. But just what makes a kiss excellent?

That’s what Susan Hughes, based out of Albright College in Pennsylvania, sought to find out. Surveying 1,041 college students, she asked questions about their preferences, styles, attitudes and behaviors with regard to kissing. A summary on eHarmony (they have articles? Who knew!) recapped the findings of the survey:

• The average number of people men and women report to have kissed by the time they reach college is 14. (We’re a little shocked, frankly. We think they’re lying. Then again, we’re kind of free with our desires here at Sex and the 405, we’ll own it.)
• Some 50 percent of men have had sex without kissing their partner first, compared to 10 percent of women.
• Apparently, men base whether they want to kiss someone on their facial attractiveness. Women focus on teeth.
• Kissing appears to be more important before sex than after. Overall, kissing seems to be more important for women than men in having a satisfying sexual experience. Men were also more likely to have sex with someone they considered a bad kisser than women.
• Men seem to prefer wetter kisses with more tongue than women, but both sexes preferred more tongue with a long-term partner. (“That’s so true!” exclaimed our editrix when she read it. It’s really funny, but considering the wild sexual antics she’s chronicled here and elsewhere, she is a really prudish kisser.)
• 59 percent of men and 66 percent of women have been turned off by a potential partner’s kiss at some point in their lives.

Hughes concluded that women seem to emphasize kissing as a means of evaluating a potential mate and monitoring the status of a relationship. Men, on the other hand, use kissing as a lead sex and as part of conflict resolution.

Interesting!

Photo by Timothy Wells. Information from eHarmony.

Ah, we just dated ourselves citing a Bush song from 1999 in the title like that, didn’t we? What the hell, it’s a good song. And we’ve pretty much all had sex to The Science of Things (our editrix probably still does) and there’s no better intro for the sex chemistry 101 lesson we’re about to impart.

We know what an orgasm is — at least we hope so. We know it feels good, it changes our breathing, heart rate, etc. But do you what’s going on in your brain? Chemicals. Try to name the four key ones off the top of your head.

Ready to compare answers?

Oxytocin. Also known as the “love hormone,” oxytocin acts mainly to induce bonding both between lovers and between children and parents.

Endorphins. Known as the “happy hormone,” endorphins make you feel good and can even act to counter stress and pain in the body.

Vasopressin. Vasopressin is also linked to pair-bonding and love.

Dopamine. A common neurotransmitter associated with excitement, motivation, and sleep patterns.

Image and information from Blisstree.

Slow news day? We always laugh when we see a story break about — gasp! — sleep sexing! OMG! Did you know people perform sex in their sleep sometimes? It’s a mainstream media favorite when pageviews need a lift. People love sex and it’s totally OK for the media to talk about it in the context of something involuntary.

“You know how, when you’re sleeping, and you get that sexy feeling, you wake up and nudge the other person in your bed for a wee-hour encounter?” the MSN BodyOdd article asks as an opener. “Well, what if you weren’t actually awake?” Nice!

A recent study released at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies annual meeting found that 7.6 percent of patients seeking help at a sleep clinic had reported an incident of “sexsomnia.”

Note that percentage, people: 7.6 — of individuals already diagnosed with a sleeping disorder. Yup, slow news day. We’re not having a slow news day, but what the hell, this is how much we love you. Here are some facts about sleep sex, stripped of the chorus of OMGs:

Shakespeare described it in Othello, but the name “sexsomnia” wasn’t coined until 1996 by Paul Fedoroff, a forensic psychiatrist in Ottawa, Colin Shapiro and Nik Trajanovic, researchers at the University of Toronto, in a paper called “Sexsomnia – A New Parasomnia?” (the aforementioned MSN article says it was coined in 2003, which is actually the date this paper was published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry).

The new study, a survey of 428 men and 404 women, found that those who reported sexsomnia were twice as likely to be using drugs. Now that’s interesting. We wish someone had followed up that correlation.

Based on a piece for MSN, via Melissa Rowley.

We’ve all heard of sexting, but how about texting while having sex?

According to Advertising Age, a report by Retreve Gadgetology revealed that one in 10 people under 25 have answered a text during sex.

“Social media is embedded in our lives,” explains Manish Rathi, co-founder and VP-marketing at Retrevo, the consumer electronics shopping and review site that performed the study. “It’s why people go to a restaurant and check Foursquare before they sit down with their friends, then take a picture of their food before they eat and upload it to Facebook.”

But texting during sex? Come on!

Debontherocks at BlogHer brings up a good point:

The study does not say what type of texts people are sending while having sex, though. Are they lifestreaming: Gettin freeky but Travis isnt rockin my sox. Any 1 up 4 pancakes soon? Or is the sex separate from the text: RT Help #flood2010 w/ $10 donation by texting Redcross to 90999?

We asked our editrix, who seems the most likely person to engage in this sort of behavior. She sighed and admitted she wants to, but she has such epic sex that she becomes completely unable to do or think of anything else at the time — but wouldn’t that be great? To livetweet an epic sex session?

Clearly, she’s insane.

Photo of AV Flox, by Rath and Some.

It’s been three years since Durex released the demoralizing results of their Global Sexual Well-Being Study, a survey conducted by Harris Interactive of over 26,000 people in 26 countries about the world. Their summary of global sexual satisfaction: mediocre.

Here is a recap:

60% said sex is fun, enjoyable and a vital part of our lives, but only 44% of people are satisfied with their sex lives.

2/3 of those surveyed didn’t feel they had sex often enough. Half believed their sex lives lacked variety and excitement.

78% of Nigerians and 74% of Mexicans found their sex lives as exciting as could be. Only 10% of Japanese and 36% of the French agree.

In the bedroom, Greeks take part in the most activities (5.8) and Nigerians rank with the least at 1.9. The most popular activity is sensual massage, with almost 59% of us taking part. Oral sex is most common among Austrians (80%) and Brazilians (70%), while the Swiss (77%) lead the way in sexual fantasies and the Thais (68%) are the most likely to prefer erotic materials to boost their libido.

83% of people worldwide have masturbated at some time in their lives. The Swiss lead (96%) and the Nigerians are the least likely to indulge (30%). Globally, a third of people do it once a week. That’s 43% of men compared to 22% of women.

The average number of partners for a heterosexual man is 13. For a heterosexual woman, it’s 7. For homosexual men, it is 108 partners. Homosexual women? 11. Bisexual men: 21 male and 14 female partners. Bisexual women average 13 male and 3 female partners. Austrians take the global cake with regard to partners: their men have an average of 29 sexual partners and Austrian women, 17. The Chinese, on the other hand, have the fewest, with an average of four for men and two for women.

In almost every country, men have had more partners than women, the only exception being New Zealand where women’s average of 20 lovers is three times that of the men’s average. The most sexually active women are in New Zealand (20), Austria (17), Russia (17) and Switzerland (14).

Less than 58% of people are comfortable with telling their partners what they want in bed. Most confident are the Mexicans (80%), the Greeks (76%), the Indians and the Spanish (74%). The British are the most tight-lipped in Europe.

Some 67% of adults have sex weekly. The most active are the Greeks (24%), who do it five times a week or more, compared to a mere 10% globally.

The younger we are and the fresher the relationship, the longer we spend having sex. In the 16-24 bracket, the average is 24 minutes. Those 55 and over average 12 minutes. Couple co-habitating or married couples have sex for an average of 16 minutes, compared to singles who average 22 minutes. The most leisurely lovers are the Mexicans, who spend an average of 45 minutes having sex. The quickest? Lovers in Hong Kong who average 27 minutes.

Less than half of respondents over 55 say they practice oral sex. Only 36% act out sexual fantasies and only 34% look at erotic materials.

Everyone wants to have more fun in sex, but 25 to 34 year-olds crave more fun than respondents in any other age bracket.

A little less than half of adults surveyed expect to become more experimental in the next decade. The Mexicans are the most optimistic this will happen (73%) — and so are the Thais, at 72%.

Durex issued the following suggestions for those seeking to improve their sex lives:

• Write down what you want.
• Sext.
• Use a toy or product you haven’t used before.
• Give feedback.
• Play sex games.

We’re three years into the decade — what have you done to spice things up in your bedroom?

Information via Durex.

Photo by Michael Slone, via FilthyGorgeous Things.