[bioblog] Planting a million trees, cephalopods love HD, strange sex and more!

[redroanchronicles]

When Gashaw Tahir returned to his native Ethopia and found it horribly deforested, he didn't just cry into his Cheerios. he hired 450 young people, mobilized the local community, and planted a million trees. And yeah, just typing that made me tear up a little. I'M NOT ASHAMED.

Here's some interesting research on using sound pollution to produce hydrogen fuels. I still don't understand the "we'll make fuel from water!" thing though, honestly. Surely everyone realizes by now that major water crisis is looming in our near futures.

Poachers are now hunting rhinoceros by helicopter. Also, caviar hunters are pushing sturgeon to extinction.

Apparently, octopuses are totally into the new HD thing when it comes to televisions. I'm so glad you did that research, science.

Okay, kids. We're about to get real, by which I mean real sexy. Well, not sexy, actually. But we're going to talk about sex. Among pipefish and ducks. BRACE YOURSELVES.

Here's a factoid about male pregnancy, which only occurs (as far as we know) in seahorses, pipefish and seadragons. Apparently male pipefish can selectively abort eggs that come from females they have dubbed sub-standard. (Here's some more on male pregnancy and pipefish at Discover's "The Loom" blog with Carl Zimmer.) That is so fucking cool, you guys. I've heard of lizards that can do that, and some birds can eject semen that they weren't real interested in keeping, but it's just insane some of the adaptations that species have developed to allow them greater control over reproduction.

For instance, most sex among ducks is forcible. It doesn't seem pleasant at all. So faced with multiple breedings by males she has not selected, the female duck has developed an amazing defense: her vagina is a crazy corkscrewed house of mirrors. She can guide an undesirable male's ejaculation into blind alleys and empty chambers (if she could lure the male in and knife him in the back, she probably would. That'd be awesome.) So of course the male has adapted to this, as well. In addition to his iron-clad instinct to mate with other ducks -- including other male ducks, dead ducks, and things that sort of looked like ducks but the next morning he has to admit to himself were actually chickens -- he also has an explosive corkscrew penis.

I know, you're thinking, "WTF, how does anybody even know that?" Well, there's science. Somebody out there is actually studying duck penises. With video.

You can watch it here. And YOU'RE WELCOME.

It's actually quite interesting. As the article notes: Of course, drakes don’t mate with the air. Having made this video, Brennan still needed a way to see how a duck penis actually performs its appointed task. Unable to film duck penises in a real female oviduct, she built a fake oviduct out of silcone. She then managed to get a drake to mate with it. But the overwhelming force of the explosive penis broke the fake oviduct.

Nice. NICE, ducks. You are real gentlemen. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.

Comments

[holyschist]

The more I learn about ducks, the more glad I am that I am NOT. O_o

[foxfirefey]

Obviously you should be posting about ducks to wtf_nature!

[damned_colonial]

Seconded!

[umadoshi]

I've been alarmed by the sex lives of ducks since a good friend told me about seeing it happen in the park a couple years ago. I fondly remember the days when I mainly thought of ducks as adorable. Eek.

[cyprinella]

Poachers need to DIAF.

Pipefish are really neat critters. There are a couple of populations that have adapted to freshwater and I know people who have attempted to breed them in captivity. They apparently have a very extensive courtship that starts with a dawn dance and can't be triggered without it. It's neat.

[ranunculus]

You should check out the Goldman Award prize winners, for example:
http://www.goldmanprize.org/
recipients
current
Marc Essangui

[multimediafunhouse.blogspot.com]

I came back hoping that the-one-blog-I-found-with-all-the-awesome-linkage was still there and not a figment of my imagination and what did I find? "Now with extra awesome!" And nature. And Jon Stewart. Your list gave me days worth of dinner conversation. =) I can't tell you how stoked I am about the duck porn researcher video. I love watching the ducks swim around and eat their off-brand bread ends but I'm always on edge waiting for one of the girls to get jumped on. "NO! Swim away, SWIM AWAY!" Kind of takes away some of the tranquility. It's nice to know she has a secret line of defense.