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Valentine's day is coming up, which means it's time to get romantic with your alien loved one. But how exactly do you do the deed with someone whose DNA comes from the other side of the galaxy? How do you negotiate differing erogenous zones and the possibility that your lover may want to eat you after the act? Read our handy primer on getting down and dirty with a member of an extraterrestrial species. More »
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Brachiosaurus is estimated to have weighed close to thirty metric tons. Put two of these behemoths together, and you're dealing with upwards of 125,000 pounds of dinosaur. More »
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Gonorrhea is the second-most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease in the United States. But no biggie, right? It's not like it's HIV or herpes — you know, one of those STDs that sticks with you for life. Just pop some antibiotics and you're good to go, right? More »
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The human genome carries an average of 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA, which means our ancient human ancestors must have interbred with our extinct evolutionary cousins. That raises an obvious next question: why did humans have sex with Neanderthals? More »
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Mammals generally have evolved the same basic, boring way for males to fertilize an egg: just send a bunch of tiny individual sperm into the female reproductive organs. But in insects like the diving beetle, it gets way more insane. More »
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Male splitfins wriggle about the yellow streak on their tail as part of their mating dance. Females are attracted to the wriggling tail because it looks like their typical prey. There's only one problem: the females then forget to eat. More »
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Sexual cannibalism is a remarkably common mating habit among insects and arachnids — perhaps most famously, black widow spiders and preying mantises devour males after mating with them. There are a number of competing theories about why such a seemingly harmful trait would evolve. And now we've discovered one spider who evolved a way to escape sexual cannibalism, though not without sacrifice. The male Nephilengys malabarensis saves his head by detaching another part of his anatomy — the penis. Well, actually it's a palp, not a penis, but I digress. More »
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We are living through the golden years of apocalyptic storytelling, and nothing is immune from dystopia fever - even sex. In fact, the sexapocalypse has been with us since at least the days of Hieronymous Bosch, a 15th century Dutch painter famous for depicting the end of days in vast canvasses packed with tiny figures enjoying bizarre sexual scenarios. More recently, novels like The Handmaids Tale and comic Y the Last Man suggest that horrific gender scenarios will play a major role in our dark future. More »
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What if the male version of the birth control pill wasn't a pill at all? Scientists from the University of North Carolina say a non-oral form of male contraception is on the horizon. According to researchers, all it takes to be effective is a couple blasts of high frequency sound waves...delivered straight to the testicles. More »
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Are gender roles in-born, or are they imprinted upon us? Science blogger Paul F. Norris went searching for answers in the scientific literature and came up with two incredible studies... one on rhesus monkeys, and the other on chimpanzees. What he discovered sheds some thought-provoking light on the nature/nurture debate over gender identity. More »
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A new study purports to use evolutionary psychology to explain why men fall asleep after sex, and what it actually means. The study is being widely reported as proving that men only fall asleep after sex to avoid giving affection or commitment to their female partners. Or maybe it proves that men who fall asleep after sex really are in love, after all. More »
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There are few things more disturbing in the natural world than waterfowl reproduction. This video tutorial on how to procure semen from a grey goose only adds to my waxing apprehension of all things Anatidae. A hearty thanks goes out to Improbable Research for teaching us that geese are a David Cronenberg flick waiting to happen. A Lifehacker splice is pending, but I can't promise anything. More »
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In 1896, the famed inventor, futurist, and elephant electrocution archivist made history yet again by recording the first kiss in cinema history. This clip, which featured a mustachioed fellow leering over Canadian actress Mae Irwin, was considered scandalous at the time, but Edison was no stranger to courting controversy. This was the man who pioneered cat boxing, after all. More »
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All across the globe, there are monuments and tourist attractions that transform our otherwise boring reality into a gleefully tumescent fantasia. Here are the world's most otherworldly phallic vacation destinations. More »
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At the 1983 Urodynamics Society conference in Las Vegas, pioneering urologist Sir Giles Skey Brindley delivered what was singularly the most uncomfortable lecture in the history of academia. What began as a presentation on the treatment of erectile dysfunction quickly transformed into an unwanted session of show-and-tell. More »
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Author Charles Stross has given the world many a flight of futuristic fancy — post-human worlds where androids carry on our legacy, bank robberies committed inside online games, and god-like meddlers — but what does he think the world will really be like in the next 20 years? More »
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If he could, would Hugh Hefner upload his consciousness into the Playboy Mansion, and live out the rest of eternity as the pleasure palace of his own creation? In Tom Walker's webcomic, SS Myra, the wealthy hedonist Myra does just that — except her pleasure palace is her spaceship, a spacefaring wonderland filled with talking sex toys and spunk-eating plants. But the SS Myra's new owners are Myra's worst nightmare: a pair of newlyweds who were planning to spend their honeymoon in the missionary position. More »
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Have you ever wondered how flatworms— you know, those billowing tissue-like invertebrates — reproduce? Well, certain Platyhelminthes engage in a behavior known as "penis fencing," which involves two hermaphroditic creatures dancing a bizarre sexual tarantella in hopes of impregnating their opponents. Explains PBS of this strange duel: More »
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The researchers at the United States Center for Disease Control track everything from possible pandemics to general health issues among Americans. And one of those "general health issues" turns out to be our sexual habits - for good reason, since this data can help epidemiologists track sexually transmitted diseases. But sometimes the data reveals a lot about our culture, too. More »
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Spider sex carries a very definite danger for male arachnids: genital loss. Spiders can actually lose their reproductive organs during intercourse, turning them into spider eunuchs. But, unlike humans, this "castration" actually turns the spiders into even more aggressive fighters. More »
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Did you know that there's a not unsubstantial corner of YouTube devoted to pornographic videos that aren't pornographic? And did you know that thousands of people click these painfully unsexy clips daily? More »
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How realistic are the medical practices in medical-themed romance novels? Dr. Cornelis H. (Kees) Langeveld investigated. Dr. Langeveld chose to publish his results in a medical journal, rather than in a romance novel. His study is: More »
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Nominally famous intercourse entrepreneur Dennis Hof — the star of HBO's Cathouse reality series and owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch — has a vision, a refined vision he can only articulate with such epigrams as "sex from another planet" and "Alien Cathouse girls do it different." More »
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One would not think that the sight of two swimming crabs (Portunus pelagicus) making whoopie would be an earth-shattering occasion. After all, this is a species that spends a hearty portion of its existence buried in mud. But when you slap some overly dramatic music over their amour, their reproductive habits become pure sensual crustacean phantasmagoria. This scene was captured in Japan's Lake Hamana. More »
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Sometimes, scientists ask deep, probing questions that cut to the very core of the universe's greatest mysteries. And sometimes, they wonder about how ostriches' and emus' penises work. And sometimes, that apparently prurient research can lead to new insights into how birds and reptiles evolved apart. More »
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We love ourselves some mimic octopodes, and they certainly love each other. In fact, here are two Indonesian mimic octopodes engaged in the delicate art of making genetic knock-offs of themselves. Such choreography! This is some tentacle porn we have no compunction posting without the NSFW tag. More »
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It's like an unholy alliance between furry culture, cryptozoology, and sex. The craze for Bigfoot porn started with Ape Canyon, and now this year has been joined by two new Bigfoot lover flicks. More »
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In many ways the science fiction pulps and the science fiction novels of the pulp era were conservative when it came to gender matters. Women – if they appeared at all – were usually relegated to the roles of girlfriends or victims, and sex was never mentioned. Compared to the romance, detective, and especially the spicy pulps, the science fiction pulps were incredibly chaste. But in one respect the science fiction pulps were progressive even by current standards: sex change stories. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866806&view=rss&microfeed=true Humanity isn't the only species where females have to put up with unwanted advances from males. Researchers from the universities of Copenhagen and Exeter looked into how other species deal with this problem. They hypothesized that females select more sexually attractive social companions in order to draw the attention away from themselves — that's right, that the animals chose hot friends so that males get distracted. More »
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Often called "sabre tooth sausages," naked mole rats are among the most bizarre members of the rodent realm. They live for 20 years — an enormous amount of time compared to other rodents — and exist entirely within a network of underground tunnels. They are blind, feel no pain on the surface of their skins, can run equally fast backwards and forwards, and recognize each other by smell alone. Naked mole rats exist in a social structure that's very insect-like, with one fertile queen who has a few fertile male consorts. The rest of the colony gathers food, builds out the tunnels, and defends the colony. More »
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The future of civilian space travel in low Earth orbit (or "LEO," for those in-the-know) is looking brighter by the day, but what will life be like when you're soaring hundreds of miles above Earth's surface? How will you eat, how will you sleep, and how will you go to the bathroom? We've got a preview of ten things you should know about day-to-day life in LEO, so you don't embarrass yourself when your opportunity at space travel finally presents itself. More »
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Guess what, everyone — it turns out men aren't as horny as unsubstantiated statistics say they are! According to a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Sex Research, your typical college-aged guy thinks about sex an average of 18 times a day — that's less than twice the frequency of the average college-aged woman, and nowhere near the once-every-seven-seconds "statistic" that we're all so familiar with. More »
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This may just be a less savory medical paper than the case of the STD-giving blow-up doll. In a recent study — "Subcutaneous Penile Insertion of Domino Fragments by Incarcerated Males in Southwest United States Prisons: A Report of Three Cases" — from the Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers investigated a series of dire events that had nothing to do with a Van Morrison song: More »
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When animals practice monogamy, we can generally tell right away. After all, couples like to hang out together, whether they're humans or squirrels or hawks. But one fish keeps its monogamy so top-secret that researchers actually called their pairings "invisible." More »
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Sex is probably the most popular pastime in the history of life on Earth — which makes it all the more ridiculous that so many of us have such a mealy-mouthed way of talking about it. Take the expression "the birds and the bees," which we use to avoid speaking more explicitly about courtship and sex to our kids. More »
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Over 40% of male marsh harriers look like females, spending their lives sporting the brown plumage and white heads characteristic of females. They're one of only two bird species that does this. What's the evolutionary advantage of gender bending? More »
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In case you're unaware, duck sex is perhaps the singularly horrific event of the animal kingdom, replete with labyrinthine vagina dentata, explosive erections, and the occasional dalliance with necrophilia. More »
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At what point does sex cease to function as a purely practical means of reproduction? In other words, by what process does sex become something more than just a biological imperative; when do things like eroticism and sexuality emerge in an anthropological context? More »
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Yesterday, we regaled you with the mystery of the Maine blot. Today, even more incontrovertible evidence of the supernatural comes to us from an Ohio Fox affiliate investigating a woman whose house is plagued with amorous ghosts. More »
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This sounds disturbingly like the spider equivalent of after-school special, fast-maturing male tangle-web spiders move in with young females and teach them spider foreplay. And, like all after-school specials, the males pay a terrible price for their spidery hedonism. More »
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