Supermodel/Oxford PhD Olivia Judson

Godless Capitalist generously invited me to post something on GNXP, as my blog, Beautiful Atrocities is very similar, since I'm primarily concerned with soap operas, innuendo, Ann Wilson, low-rent pop culture, septicemic humor, & asthmatic prose. Here then is what I learned from the delightful Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, by Olivia Judson, the world's most pneumatic Oxford Phd.

• Hyena scats are white because they're mostly bone powder; unlike most carnivores, hyenas can digest bone.

• Lionesses have a clinical sex mania, requiring so much stimulation - hundreds of romps - to become fertile that, by some estimates, less that 1% of copulations produce litters. Why such inefficiency? If the males of a pride are defeated, the new males kill all the cubs, which stops lactation, which brings the females back into heat. It's possible that the uber-virility required of males is a test to make sure they're strong enough to defend the pride.

• Male redback spiders have a unique fetish for being cannibalized: a male will snatch rivals from the jaws of death and leap into the meat grinder, during which process he slips her his pedipalp, thus fertilizing more eggs than if he'd survived. This curious ritual does not seem to have caught on in evolutionary circles.

• Contrary to John Derbyshire, sex is not congruent with reproduction, but refers to any process by which individuals exchange genes. Bacteria reproduce by cloning, but have sex to swap genes. Viruses can't reproduce, but still have sex & swap genes, which is why we need a new flu vaccine every year.

• A human male typically has enough sperm for 1½ ejaculations; a ram has enough for 95.

• Female sagebrush crickets drink the blood of their mates, who have evolved a pair of useless fleshy hindwings for this purpose. The female climbs on the male's back & chews on them while copulating. But since females don't like used goods, males have evolved a brutal countermeasure: when a female climbs onto a male cricket to check out his hot wings, an extra set of teeth on the male's back stabs her in the belly & holds her fast, whether she wants it or not.

• Banana slugs are hermaphrodites whose gigantic phalluses sometimes get stuck during the deed. The organ is then gnawed off, & doesn't grow back, making the slug a female. Foreplay for the European giant garden slug consists of sitting on a branch oozing mucus for an hour. Then they wrap themselves together and bungee jump, hanging by a mucus rope, unfurl their penises (from the side of their heads, who knew?), and dangle.

• Black vultures are not just faithful, they're prudes, & won't tolerate sex anywhere but the privacy of the nest. If a young randy tries to get laid at a roost, the others will flame him.

• Male scorpionflies are scavengers who present females with dead insects as a bribe. If they can't find any, they'll steal from a spider, which is dangerous to say the least. Fortunately they have a huge member with which they whack! the spider if caught. (If they're such a loser that even spider-filching doesn't work, they secrete a large gelatinous blob of saliva, which is better than nothing.)

• Spotted hyenas live in matriarchal packs led by a dominant female. Females have an enormous clitoris, capable of erection. The lips of the vagina are fused shut in a sort of pseudo-scrotum, so that urination, copulation, & birth occur via the clitoris. Thus 10% of females die in birth when the clitoris rips. How could this be an advantage?

Possible explanation: High exposure to androgens in the womb makes hyenas extremely aggressive (& in humans, gives females a huge clitoris). Hyenas are usually born in litters of 2, upon which one will immediately kill the other. Such siblicide is most common among pairs of females. The offspring of dominant females survive at twice the rate of their less aggressive peers, possibly offsetting the lethal cost of the phallic clitoris.