Quantcast
ZME Science
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment Animals

Sea Slug boasts disposable penis

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
February 13, 2013
in Animals
Reading Time: 2 mins read
A A
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSubmit to Reddit

Well we all use disposable tissues, dishes, I’ve heard of disposable tails of even limbs, but a disposable penis? Talk about taking things to the next level… But that’s exactly what this sea slug has. After mating, it simply discards its penis, grows a new one, and can even have sex again the same day.

sea slug

Chromodoris reticulata, is a type of soft-bodied marine mollusk, and as for the penis disposing process, researchers explain that it simply just falls off. Lead author Ayami Sekizawa from the Osaka City University and his team watched the species copulate 31 times and found that the animals are “simultaneous hermaphrodites” – meaning that both members are both the “man” and the “woman”, impregnating each other.

ADVERTISEMENT

A typical mating episode involves two individuals touching each other with their genital orifices, then starting the copulation. After a while, one of them backs off, then the other backs off, then they walk for a while with elongated penises, and then the genitalia just sever from their bodies and float away.

“The sea slug sheds 1/3 of the internal penis length after each copulation,” Sekizawa said. “The sea slug is able to grow the penis gradually to its original length.”

But this loss doesn’t seem to hamper the sea slug’s life:

Sorry to interrupt, but you should really...

...Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

“In one case,” the researchers wrote, “we observed three successive copulations each separated by approximately 24 hours.”

There still isn’t a good explanation for why this happens, but there are a handful of other animals that exhibit a similar behavior. Argonauta, a type of octopus and some orb-weaving spiders have the same type of behavior.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Little is known about mating behavior in simultaneously hermaphroditic animals,” Sekizawa said. “The disposable penis in our nudibranch (sea slug) study is merely one case of peculiar mating behavior” in these animals.”

Heh, and here I was thinking that squirrels who masturbate to avoid STDs were weird.

Tags: reproductionsea slug
ShareTweetShare
Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.