I’m going to call a group of sexy zombies a “slouch.”

October 22, 2008

It’s midterm time, which means that instead of actual science, The Oyster’s Garter brings you the very latest in sexy zombie paraphernalia. No, I can’t believe that four different sexy-zombie-related links came my way in a single week, either.

  • Feeling unprepared for the zombie apocalypse? Zombie Tools is selling actual sharp weapons designed to slay the undead. And anyone still pining for Faith will find comfort in an entire photo gallery of hot goth girls slaying zombies. (Via Chaos Theory)
  • You, too, can be zombie cheesecake with this sexy zombie nurse costume. Or perhaps you’d prefer to be a sexy zombie fairy? I need to stop now or my brain will explode, and then the zombies will eat it.

4 Comments | Geek, Sex, Silliness, Zombies | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

“She knows. She’s programmed. And she’s ready.”

October 13, 2008

Another entry for Karen’s Scientist Pin-Up contest. Though this 1967 ad for cigarettes features a lab technician, not a scientist (everyone knows that being a PI leads to a wandering womb), she is wearing glasses and a white coat. But with that blank stare, she doesn’t look brainy, she looks like she wants BRAAIIIIINS.

Text:

Underneath that pocket of pencils there beats the heart of a digital computer. This girl has already catalogued and cross-indexed the Tiparillo slim, elegant shape. And the neat, white tip. She knows that there are two Tiparillos. Regular, for a mild smoke. Or new Tiparillo M with menthol, for a cold smoke. She knows. She’s programmed. And she’s ready. But how about you? Which Tiparillo are you going to offer? Or are you just going to stand there and stare at her pencils?

AIEEE! She’s programmed…TO EAT YOUR BRAINS AND DECORATE HER LAB WITH YOUR VISCERA!

Via Sociological Images.

6 Comments | Sex, Silliness, Zombies | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Absence makes the sperm grow smaller

September 26, 2008

ResearchBlogging.orgDear Oyster’s Garter,

I am an attractive male sea squirt (a Styela plicata, in case you were wondering) in the prime of life. I live alone on the underside of a nice dock, I’ve got plenty of tasty phytoplankton to eat, and my siphons have extremely handsome pleats. But I’m worried, because every time I broadcast spawn, my sperm are so small. My tunicate-trash neighbors live together in a big clump, and they have really big sperm. I’m worried that none of my tiny sperm are making it to an egg, but I don’t want to live in a licentious tangle like my neighbors. Help!

Sincerely,
Desperate on the Dockside

Dear Desperate,

Though you are an unusually moral tunicate – most of your kind are content to spawn the whole week long – you don’t need to worry about your sperm. It’s supposed to be small. A recent paper in PNAS has just discovered that the sperm of tunicates living in high densities is bigger and lives longer than the sperm from single tunicates such as yourself. Why do apartment-dwelling tunicates have better sperm than tunicates living in McMansion-like isolation? The researchers suggest that big sperm are slow, so there’s less likelihood of all the sperm mobbing the same egg and killing it. (It’s called polyspermy.)

In contrast, DOTD, your sperm may be small, but they are quick and numerous. The more sperm you put out there, the greater the chances one will encounter an egg. And don’t worry – the ladies are doing their part too. Female tunicates living in low densities make bigger eggs than female tunicates living high densities, so the target is easier to hit.

Of course, DOTD, when you have reached the appropriate size, you will turn into a female. Does the fact that you make teeny tiny effective sperm mean that you make teeny tiny ineffective eggs? Nope. Gamete size seems to be entirely determined by your environment – in other words, it is phenotypically plastic. You will make the right sized gametes for your environment.

So fear not, little lone tunicate. You do not have to live in a tangle of big fat sperm and teeny tiny eggs like your dissolute neighbors to make a go of it. Enjoy your low-density lifestyle!

Style shamelessly stolen from my hero, Dr. Tatiana.


A. J. Crean, D. J. Marshall (2008). Gamete plasticity in a broadcast spawning marine invertebrate Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (36), 13508-13513 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806590105

3 Comments | Critters, Ocean, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Another day in the sexy lab…

September 21, 2008

A while ago, Karen put out the call for science pinups:

Why do the librarian types get to have a monopoly on brainy-sexiness? Where are the scientists? We’re brainy, after all, and therefore I think we should be better represented in our cultural repertoire of brainy-sexy images.

Apparently Wonderbra heard Karen’s plea. This scientist looked through the wrong microscope and lost her glasses, her comfy shoes, and her shirt. And she seems to keep on losing bits of clothing – must be funding cuts.

Thanks, Hisly and Martini-Corona!

1 Comment | Sex, Silliness, Time to Make the Science | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Teenage French oysters perish from too much sex

August 5, 2008

Oh, teenage French oysters, you were too fast to live and too young to die. Why, oh why, did you not get the message that “true spawning waits“? Did you not know that each release of gametes is like a precious rose, and with every billion sperm or eggs you cast into the water column, a delicate petal is plucked? But it doesn’t matter now, teenage French oysters, because you got a virus and now you are DEAD.

That’s right, teenage French oysters. You got Oyster Herpes Virus Type 1, and as if that wasn’t bad enough,  you gorged yourself on the spring plankton bloom. Your parents would have been grateful for even a microliter of plankton, but you decandent spineless spawn wasted all that hard-earned energy on developing your genitalia!

Now is a 13-month-old oyster ready for that? NO! You’re supposed to “Do the right thing, wait for the ring!” (Not having hands, fingers, or precious metals is no excuse, you two-valved strumpets.) And you have paid, oh yes, you have paid. You are sinners in the hands of the angry French, and truly, “it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.”

Repent, all you lewd lamellibranchs! Hold in your gametes, turn away from phytoplankton blooms! It’s not too late to be fried in a buttery pan instead of FRIED IN BRIMSTONE!

2 Comments | Critters, Doom, Incredible Edibles, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

The ocean like you’ve NEVER imagined it – or have you?

June 19, 2008

Priapulids have nothing on this HIV/AIDS prevention poster (REALLY, REALLY NSFW). This ocean scene is a highly disconcerting combination of gorgeous and Legend of the Overfiend. (Though how could a phallic ocean not include those epically well-endowed barnacles?)

Meanwhile, it’s BOOOOBS INNNN SPAAAAAACE (STILL NSFW) for the hetero lads. The theme for both posters? “Explore. Just Protect Yourself.”

The posters are put out by AIDES, a European HIV/AIDS NGO. What is with those Europeans and the sexy science? I’m never, ever, going to look at a turtle the same way again.

Via Boing Boing

3 Comments | Health, Ocean, Sex, Star Trekkin' | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Live Nude Nudibranchs

June 18, 2008

Mieke sent me this lovely photo of Australian nudibranchs a while back. My first thought was, “OMG! Koosh balls of the sea!” My second thought was, “They are TOTALLY doin’ it!” (See the loop of orange eggs in the upper right?)

Nudibranchs are sea slugs – just like land slugs, they are molluscs that have lost their shells. Since they don’t have any hard parts to protect them, they tend to be incredibly poisonous – they are pretty and colorful to advertise DO NOT WANT. Nudibranchs’ chemical defenses are usually stolen from their prey, the toxic compounds or stinging cells serving to protect the nudibranch long after that unfortunate sponge or anemone is but a tasty memory.

Like the mighty banana slug, nudibranchs are simultaneous hermaphrodites and can both fertilize and be fertilized. They can be tender, stroking each other’s tentacles, or debauched, mating in chains (who wants to be in the middle?) or snacking on their partner. (Apparently, unlike their banana slug relatives, nudibranchs do not engage in apophallation. Aren’t you disappointed?)  Sadly, the sexy time comes at quite a high cost – most nudibranchs are semelparous, meaning they die shortly after mating.

With the help of Sea Slug Forum and Nudibranchs of Australia, I think Mieke’s nudibranchs in flagrante delicto are a species of Okenia, possibly Okenia stellata. Want more nudibranchs? National Geographic has stunning photos, videos, and even nudibranch puzzles.

1 Comment | Critters, Ocean, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Perverted cannibalistic hermaphrodites haunt the Pacific Northwest!

March 24, 2008

Horrific sexual hijinks are taking place beneath the majestic redwoods of central California! I’m not talking about San Francisco – the Fulton Street Fair looks like a Bible Belt county fair compared to this. No, I speak of the unspeakable sexual habits of the lovely banana slug.

The banana slug, so called for its fetching yellow color with occasional black spots, is the second-largest slug in the world (and the mascot of UC Santa Cruz). For most of its life, it crawls about the Pacific redwood forest in the normal sluggy fashion, munching upon rotting leaves, mushrooms, animal droppings, and other detritus. But if a slug crosses the pheremone-soaked slime trail of a fellow slug, prolonged tantric slug-sex ensues…and ends in a most ghastly fashion.

Before we get to the juicy bits (slimy bits?), you need to know a bit about slug anatomy. Most slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites and have both a penis and a genital opening, so that when they have sex they both fertilize and are fertilized. (They then both lay eggs somewhere damp and out of the way, and that is it for parental care.) Also, due to the vagaries of evolution, the genitalia and anus of slugs are located on the right side of their heads. This is because slugs are descended from snails with spiraling shells – the snails needed to move their naughty bits down in order to extend outside the shell, so they put them on their head. Even though slugs have since lost their shells, they have retained this feature of snail anatomy. So most gastropods actually poop on their own heads – ain’t nature grand?

So, slug-sex begins with head-waving and gentle biting of the other slug’s genital opening. Once they get to the Big Deed, the slugs both insert their penises into the other’s genital opening (remember, both are on the right side of their head) and go at it for hours and hours. And hours and hours and hours. And then…sometimes…one or both slugs will CHEW OFF THE OTHER’S PENIS. Yep, they rasp with their radula until the penis comes off. Then they slurp down the penis like spaghetti.

I bet your very first reaction was, “Boy, I sure hope there is a video of sexy slug cannibalism!” Of course there is, gentle reader! If you still want more, have some auto-apophallation (isn’t that a great bit of jargon?) – this is a video [warning: big file] of a slug chewing off its own penis.

Do not fear too much for the penis-less slug. While the penis does not grow back, the slug is not condemned to a lonely sexless life. It can still enjoy slug-sex as the receiving party. But perhaps the more educated banana slugs contemplate the theories of Freud and shake their tentacles in rage at the cruel hand of Fate. Or at least the cruel radula of their ex.

This post was inspired by the slugs in flagrante in the above photo, which I met near the Little Sur River this past weekend. (The openings you see are not their genitals, but their pneumatostome, which is how they breathe.) It is unknown if any penis-gnawing ensued, as the slugs were still making the sweet yin-yang of love amidst the flowers when I left.

10 Comments | Critters, Eeeeewww..., Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Monogamous voles revealed to be closeted swingers

February 11, 2008

Nature keeps on betraying right-wing conservatives. For example, it’s hard to claim that homosexuality is unnatural when adorable gay penguins are raising a chick together. (I’m not even getting into the question of the natural-ness of chicks with dicks.) Now, the Christian right’s monogamy poster-vole has been revealed as, in the words of the Nature paper, a “randy rodent [that] revels in raunchy romps.”

The prairie vole has long been renowned for its lifelong partnerships. Eric Keroack, the Bush administration’s appointee to oversee federal family planning programs, cited prairie vole research to support his claim that:

Keroack claims that that people who engage in premarital sex experience chronic emotional pain, which lowers their oxytocin levels. This in turn impairs their ability to form healthy relationships down the road. “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual,” he writes.

It’s a good thing Keroack has since resigned, because his oxytocin levels might have been severely damaged by new research showing that female prairie voles are dirty, dirty cheaters. Paternity tests reveal that the voles are only socially monogamous. Sexually…well, they’re only a role model if you’re polyamorous. While maintaining their primary partnership, female voles have sex with lots of other males.

And to make moral matters worse from Keroack’s point of view, those slutty female voles aren’t even punished. From the Nature News article:

Carter has observed philandering voles in her own lab, and notes that the infidelity did not disrupt pre-existing partnerships. When a female initiates contact with an outside male, for example, the relationship remains strictly sexual. “She mated with him,” says Carter, “and then she attacked him, ran him off and went back to her established partner.”

Clearly, the next target of abstinence-only sex ed programs should be the voles.

5 Comments | Critters, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Hung like a barnacle

February 8, 2008

Barnacles have the most impressive penises in the sea – a barnacle’s penis can be 8 times longer than the barnacle’s entire body. Barnacles are well-endowed because they’re cemented in place – in order to advance the species, they need to, um, “visit” their neighbors. (That’s also why barnacles are simultaneous hermaphrodites that both give and receive the glorious gift of crustacean life. Separate sexes wouldn’t work, since the only neighbor in reach could be the same sex.)

However, apparently barnacle love is even more amazing than we thought!  Science Daily (via Bug Girl) reports:

Graduate student Christopher Neufeld and Dr. Richard Palmer from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta have shown that barnacles appear to have acquired the capacity to change the size and shape of their penises to closely match local wave conditions.

When wave action is light, a longer (thinner) penis can reach more mates, but at times of higher wave action, a shorter (stouter) penis is more manoeuvrable in flow and therefore can reach more mates.

It’s not the size of the barnacle penis, it’s the motion in the ocean! Clearly, this calls for a viewing of that classic of crustacean pornography, “Barnacles Tell No Lies.”

3 Comments | Critters, Ocean, Sex | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

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