Finding a well fed male, and then using her -so to speak- penis to access their delicious nutritive resources…
This is a penis.
Okay, okay, it's not one of those weird duck penises, nor a colorful mandrill phallus. Even so, it is a spectacular penis in its very peculiar way, it turns out that the body behind that belongs to a regular female ... that is, it is a female penis.
In the 4 species of the genus neotrogla (usually called barklices), females have developed an organ that penetrates the male's body to seize sperm.
Let's indulge in some natural porn ...
Here is where I have to correct myself, sorry, because of two tremendous failures. The first is that in the same way that females have developed this organ, males have also changed and developed a genital opening for sex, in addition to other important adaptions. It's still small, but there it is.
The second, that the female organ is, officially, called a gynosome, to highlight that despite it looks like a penis and it acts largely like a penis, it is not a male organ and that what it does is collecting instead of injecting sperm.
Unofficially I see there some masculine “pride”, do not take me wrong, it is not only that the scientists give that large and non-intuitive name to the female organ, it is also that they don’t talk very much about the males in the paper. And they, the males, have also become very theirs and are very selective with the females with whom they want to copulate.
Why this strange evolutionary turn?
These insects live in caves with very few resources. According to a Japanese entomologist, this strange relationship makes it easier for females to extract nutritional resources from males, apart from semen, which will play a key role in their future eggs to develop. Females hunger for sex, and nutritional resources is what they get, besides sperm, from it.
But much remains to be explained, because it turns out that we find some females that have developed a whole catalog of penis ...oh, well, I mean ginosomes, incredible intricated and also…intimidating. In 3 species those ginosomes have spines that fit with specific holes of the male genitals (and again I have to remark that males have also changed developing that cavities, to avoid that happy narrative based on the organs that penetrate and not on the ones they collect); are there evolutive advantage in this new pack of inversions of the common arrangement of male-> penises, females->vaginas…we don’t know yet.
In any case these insects devote with enthusiasm to their particular evolutionary arrangement, they can spend hours and hours -and hours- copulating. In the laboratory (take a second to think about how those scientists could manage to raise cave animals in a laboratory) it has been observed that the average time of intercourse is ... 50 hours. But a very devoted couple spent not less than 73 happy hours exploring the possibilities of their inverted anatomy.
They are not, however, the only animals that have invented male genitals very similar to males. Spotted hyenas come to mind.
Animals are so stubborn creatures, they indulge in breaking rules. Whatever total, overwhelming and resounding the rule is ... there is always an animal that invents how to skip it (even this one).
Images from:
World's First Female "Penis" Found, in Cave-Dwelling Bugs
To learn more:
About neotroglas and their mating habits:
Also, the wonderful and very explicit paper: Cell Press: Cell Press
