Sex Tips

Here are some excerpts from the book, “Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men”, which I find interesting and informative:

Chapter 7 – The blue-headed wrasse is a very handsome fish with its violet head brushed with broad yellow stripes that taper down its streamlined body. They live in harems with a dozen or so females being jealously guarded by a single male. That in itself is not unusual – it’s a popular arrangement even among humans – but what is so very strange about the blue-headed wrasse, and very clever too, is that it can change sex virtually at will. When the colorful male dies, or is removed by a spoilsport researcher, the largest female in the harem, and she alone, begins to change color and to adopt the flashy outfit of her new departed lover. She is literally changed into a male. This transformation takes about a week, after which she actually becomes a male in both appearance and in behavior. From then on he/she runs the harem, in time fertilizing, with the sperm he/she is now able to manufacture, the eggs of her one-time female companions. (hmmm...)

...The marine worm Bonellia viridis is a visually unappealing creature which spends all its time in a burrow under the mud of mangrove swamps in the warm waters around Malaysia and Indonesia. To feed, the worm pushes out an enormously long proboscis, almost a meter in length, which sweeps to and fro in a broad swathe around the mouth of its burrow, packing up food. All these worms are females; males are nowhere to be seen. That is because they actually live inside the females. Despite the metre-long ‘tongue’, the body of the female is only 8-10 cm long. But that is enormous compared to the tiny male, who is 5 mm long. This much-reduced creature lives inside the female’s womb, where he feeds on her nutrients and needs only to produce sperm when she is ready to lay eggs. Imagine having a husband like that, the ultimate sperm-delivery system, tucked away out of sight and reduced to a single function – producing sperm to fertilize your eggs! (cool, eh? here’s more…)

The young Bonellia pass through a larval stage where they wander about in the mud. At this point, they are neither male nor female and have the potential to develop into either sex. When the time arrives for them to change into adults, they settle down on the surface of the mud. If a young worm’s chosen spot is within the arc of the female’s sweeping proboscis, a hormone secreted by the ranging proboscis decides its sexual destiny. Once touched by this wondering tongue and intoxicated by the hormone, the larva inches helplessly towards the female, enters her womb and takes up residence. Within a few short weeks, all the necessary organs develop and the enslaved male starts pumping out sperm. Larvae that settle beyond the reach of a female’s tongue stay where they are and themselves grow into females who, once mature, begin casting about, quite literally, for a mate. (you wanna be a wrasse, or the Bonellia worm?)