Squid don’t just make sperm: they package it up into fairly elaborate little torpedoes called spermatophores, which are either handed to the female with a specially modified arm called the hectocotyl arm, or squirted onto her with a penis. Once on the female (or a male, it really doesn’t matter), the spermatophore everts, forming a structure called the spermatangia, in which all the packed sperm uncoil, ready to do their job, and the whole mass is anchored to the target with a cement body. These structures do show species-specific differences, but here is one example from Heteroteuthis dispar.
Heteroteuthis dispar. Spermatophore (a) and spermatangium (b)
Now the curious observation: squid are often captured festooned with spermatophores and spermatangia, and in many cases, the spermatangia may be imbedded deeply into the musculature of the animal — so it’s not simply as if the spermatophores are lovingly placed in an appropriate orifice, they are piercing the female (or the male, again, they don’t care that much), tearing deep into the interior. The question is, how do they get in there?
A few simple observations have revealed the answer. Spermatophores can be triggered by a gentle squeeze, at which time all of their fertilization machinery will fire. Here are some photos of some spermatophores going to work on a squid carcass.
(A) Placement of spermatophores on a dead male specimen of Moroteuthis ingens (mantle length ~300mm) and initiation of the spermatophoric reaction by pressing on the ejaculatory apparatus with a forceps. (B)
Same specimen, but submerged in seawater, showing the ejaculating spermatophores. (C) Exterior view of
implanted spermatangia in tissue of a female, showing the site of penetration and part of the amber ejaculatory
apparatus. (D) Interior view of same spermatangia, showing the sperm mass and the amber ejaculatory apparatus.
(Read the caption carefully. That’s a human triggering sperm to ejaculate into a dead male squid. It’s gay necrophiliac bestiality! You don’t see that in the papers every day.)
The answer is that spermatophores also release digestive enzymes and actively burrow into the target tissue. Squid sperm show an aggressive persistence and vigorously active assault on the female body that our own pathetic human emissions lack…I feel a little inadequate, but I’m sure women are a bit relieved.
Another interesting observation is the function of the squid penis. It seems to be less an intromittent organ than a kind of hose to direct the ejaculations onto the female. In natural situations, unlike the photographs above, it is responsible for initiating the spermatophore reaction. Each spermatophore has a threadlike extension of a surrounding membrane, and tugging on that triggers the reaction. It’s like a squad of paratroopers leaping out of a phallic airplane, each attached by a static line that yanks the rip cord as they emerge.
Hoving HJT, Laptikhovsky V (2007) Getting under the skin: autonomous implantation of squid spermatophores. Biological Bulletin 212: 177-179.
Real interesting, thks for the article.
Dan Howitt nyc
Eeeeeeew. That was mildly revolting.
The day wouldn’t be complete without a little gay necrophiliac bestiality.
The loving design of the Creator shows up once more.
Seriously, why aren’t more Xians happy to relieve their “God” of such aggressive and damaging practices? Granted, Ken Miller still needs to tell us why the world is left to evolve such barbarities, but at least he isn’t telling us how God carefully designed malaria so that it will kill small children.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
You should read Worldnetdaily more often.
The Science Pundit:
…and a Woody Allen reference.
looks very complex to me.. very very complex… any thoughts? or did this happen just out of hance?
Gay necrophiliac bestiality, eh? *sings* “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . . “
Oh professor, I love it when you talk dirty.
I remeber a story in the newspaper about a giant squid (male) that had washed up dead on a beach with another giant squid’s spermatophore inserted under his skin. Why this squid hated America and the baby Jesus so much I do not know. Perhaps Rev. Warren will address this burning question at the convocation.
I forgot to mention that genetic testing clearly proved it was Archipoofus Dux.
Why this squid hated America and the baby Jesus so much I do not know.
Because, that squid was a Darwinist.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
or did this happen just out of hance? – mindy
From the free online dictionary:
hance
v. t. 1. To raise; to elevate.
n. 1. (Arch.) See Hanse.
2. (Naut.) A sudden fall or break, as the fall of the fife rail down to the gangway.
hanse (hns)
n.
A medieval merchant guild or trade association.
Nope. Don’t think hance had anything to do with the evolution of cephalopod reproductive arrangements.
That last description you wrote has implanted in my mind an image of a military training camp inside of the squid for all the little paratroopers. There should be a cartoon.
With correct html commands:
Because, that squid was a Darwinist.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
This is one of the greatest things I’ve read all week.
oh, NOW YOUR SUPRISED??!
THIS is the result of teching the perverted bedbug LIFESTYLE-no its nNot a choice!!!–in schools because thtats the only way gay nevrophilca lifestyles reproduce–doesn’t your SCIENCE (which you replaced CThulu) and LOGIC tell you they can’t have babies like this?
You REAP what you SEW Professor and his ‘choir’ (and don’t say Im closed-minded I am a vbery open MIND) and what you do is between you and the old ones (which I will laugh when you meet hahahaha!) but how you can pervert innocent squed to not be eatin first is bey9ond me.
Happy Monkey! in CHTULUS name (you dont believe btu you WILL!!!hahahahahahahahahah!0
Bronwian, OD
It’s gay necrophiliac bestiality!
And, as such, far more dangerous to the world than global warming.
Just goes to show, homosexual and heterosexual and asexual behavior are common – they are natural. Completely contradicts the pope’s whole argument in the previous post.
Religion is a human creation for the sole purpose of imposing rules on others. Interestingly, the rules so imposed are not always followed even by the religious leaders them,selves.
It’s like a squad of paratroopers leaping out of a phallic airplane, each attached by a static line that yanks the rip cord as they emerge.
I think i need a towel
Well, right now, the prevailing theory is that a coven of evil djinns designed the sperm delivery system, but that in all likelihood a trickster spirit of some sort, either a sprite or satyr, tampered with the firing mechanism of the spermatophores. Scientists are still hashing out the details.
Whew! Sex as predation.
Reading this description, I imagine scenes with BeeGees music, disco balls and hard-drinking men on the dance floor, internally primed and just waiting for a female to come within striking range.
I’m pretty sure that’s how some of us saw ourselves, anyway.
Eeeeew…. *shudder*
Parasitic sperm will haunt my nightmares for quite some time now.
> It’s gay necrophiliac bestiality! You don’t > see that in the papers every day.
Sure we do. You’re just beating a dead horse.
Heh, I see what you did there, Rick.
i call dibs on gaynecrophiliacbestiality.com
You only hurt the one you love.. (Spike Jones version)
Can we refrain from invoking Rule 34 please?
Or is it too late?
…I was finally starting to not be afraid of squid. I even decided that some of them were pretty and wrote a bio paper on them.
Thanks for reinvigorating my nightmares.
Off-topic but cephalopodulent … do any squidfolk have an opinion on the lumper/splitter debate vis-a-vis the genus Architeuthis? It seems that every specimen ever found has been given a species of its very own: sanctipauli, japonica, etc., on the basis of very little evidence.
mindy (#7), are you fishing around to see if you can get us to bite on some creationist drivel, or are you asking a legitimate question? It sounds suspiciously like typical creationist “how could this have all happened by chance” rhetoric.
Random mutation is one way for evolution to occur. There are a lot of mechanisms (punctuated equilibrium, genetic drift, etc.). Some will claim that mutation only destroys and that no new “information” (by which they’re inferring that genetic code is intelligently designed) can accumulate in this way. This comes from a misunderstanding of natural selection.
Random mutation could be likened to static on a television screen (to use the analogy from a creationist web site I recently debunked on my blog). Natural selection would be the process of selecting a few pixels from each new batch of random pixels (genes) that most resemble something (say, a photograph), leaving the pixels already selected (mostly) alone, and discarding all the rest (they are lost because they don’t lead to viable offspring). With natural selection as a “filter” on this randomness, eventually a clear picture resembling something recognizable appears.
Contrary to popular belief, natural selection is not “survival of the fittest.” Fitness is a specific distinction that indicates knowledge of the condition something is supposed to be fit for. In a lot of cases, random mutations can be completely benign (eye color, for example). As long as mutations aren’t lethal or prevent offspring and no selection pressures are applied, variety within a species will abound. This is useful to any species because when a selection pressure is applied, all of that genetic variety increases the chances of survival by specific lines.
It should not come as a surprise that the most alien of conditions (the bottom of the ocean) will inevitably lead to alien genetics (from the perspective of us land dwellers). Where lack of light, intense pressures, frigid cold, and contact with already-weird denizens of the deep come into play, it could be easily described as an “arms race of strange.”
Did this remind anyone else of Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex?
It seems to be less an intromittent organ than a kind of hose to direct the ejaculations onto the female.
I think I’ve seen people movies like that……
Is spermatangium keratinised or mineralised? How is it so hard?
It’s like a squad of paratroopers leaping out of a phallic airplane, each attached by a static line that yanks the rip cord as they emerge.
Gee, that seems just like the last vignette of Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask.
Great. In my country, the United Kingdom, the government recently outlawed images of necrophilia, bestiality and extremely violent sex. So, by reading your post, I’ve just set myself up for a stretch in prison.
This obvious obsession with squid sex…
bit of a giveaway, n’est pas?
“PZ Myers Arrested for Tentacle Porn”
Phallic airplane?
You dirty little beast.
As much as I like watching movies like Alien, and other movies with exotic fantasy creatures, I have to say those movies have nothing on nature for the weirdness and occasional horror factor.
Bleah. I’m alerting Rick Warren about this post. We can’t be having this sort of smut polluting the interwebs and destroying the minds of America’s impressionable youths. Why do you hate America, PZ? Hater.
Reminds me of traumatic insemination in some insects, mites, and onychophorans. I’m not sure which is more fascinating.
Adzak (#32) – no, strangely it reminded me of Wrath of Kahn…the part where they stick a “juvenile Ceti eel” in Chekov’s ear. Do the squid’s digestive enzymes work on humans? Yikes!!!
Only in Japan.
(Come on, you were all thinking it!)
God, isn’t getting it in our hair enough? Remind me never to date a squid.
Quoted purely for quotability.
I am really! REALLY!!grateful that you chose science as a career. My imagination staggers at what might have happened if you had become a priest or cinematographer
Merry squidmas and a happy monkey!.
(does that have anything to do with spanking the monkey?)
Robert
Azdak,
Darn it, you thought along similar lines as did I. Now I’m going to have to think of some other cultural reference. Hmm…
Cephalopods are growing like yellow sea-anemones on the current
And we ejaculate aggressively in the medieval gardens of their burrowing spermatophores
Oh I want to inseminate
Oh I am inseminating
Oh I have inseminated
Thank you
To the obvious question at this point: no, the last time I indulged in LSD was when comet Hyakutake was nearby.
Now I’m not a biologist (though I have studied a bit of biology so I probably should know this), but I thought penises evolved to prevent the drying out of sperm after ejaculation in land animals? Is this not so?
Is it simply that this squid penis shares a different history than our own, or do they share the same history, and that history just happens to start earlier and for a different reason than I was given to think it had?
‐‐‐
PZ said: “Squid sperm show an aggressive persistence and vigorously active assault on the female body that our own pathetic human emissions lack…I feel a little inadequate“.
And PZ, what a throwback you are! How typically masculine to always worry about the efficacy of your capacity for genetic proliferation. Besides, I’m sure plenty of people out there wish their male partners would squirt them with digestive enzymes, considering the human alternative when it comes to aggressive, involuntary sexual penetration. Digestive enzymes do wash off, you know; can you imagine if the primary form of birth control was to check yourself for spermatophores? Christ, I’d go for that!
Is the gender of the human important?
Brad D @38, some movie horror monsters are based on ‘real’ creatures. Filmmakers will combine a few different physical &/or behavioural characteristics. Alien used the wasp implanting into paralysed live victims bit. I think the bursting out is like some worms (tho’ not usually lethal). I’m not sure if there were other bits based on actual examples.
Does that cause injury to the female? It seems like it would from the description, but I suppose it couldn’t be too serious, or the squids would never successfully reproduce!
Is this normal among all squids?
Did anyone else think of squid bukkake when reading this?
So, PZ, is the post title a reference to the Richard Brautigan poem? If so, massive kudos!
That happens to me a lot, too. Got the scars to prove it.
EOPOA (Early Onset Primary Old Age) is so comforting, eh?
Of course it’s a Brautigan reference! What else could it be?
As best I could understand it, squid reproduction is, in fact, bukkake.
“Does that cause injury to the female? It seems like it would from the description, but I suppose it couldn’t be too serious, or the squids would never successfully reproduce!”
Actually most squid tend to die after they reproduce. So yeah, it’s kind of fatal.
Well, there’s a band whose name refers to the same poem. But I figured you to be both cool enough and old enough to be name-checking the original. What else would a godless liberal do but sit around and read ’60s poets and novelists?
I am now expecting an appropriate “Trout Fishing in America” reference in a future post!
Have you tried the spermatophores on other tissue to see if they would imbed?
Great idea for a science fiction plot. The alien cephs fire their sperm at humans where it inbeds in their flesh. They can only be removed by tearing them out but their are so many it is virtually impossible without dying. When the youing cephs mature they eat away at the host.
All the Christians will believe they are being personally persecuted and blame it on gay marriage. The Muslims will blame it on western science and the infidel Christians. The new agers will blame it on bad Feng Shui. And the Libertarians will blame it on market regulation.
The hero is an atheist biologist who loves calamari.
Just in time for Xmas!
Okay, this post and the angler fish post below?
Eeew!
Biology is soooo gross.
I can never unread this post… biology is traumatizing.
Gay necrophiliac bestiality FOR SCIENCE!
And I, for one, no longer welcome our new cephalopod overlords.
JM Inc, # 47:
“Digestive enzymes do wash off, you know;… ”
Dream on. The squid is underwater and they don’t wash off.
Maybe they’re more like ticks; you need to hold a hot match to their rear ends.
One more to add to the list of proofs of God’s great love!
Another interesting observation is the function of the squid penis. It seems to be less an intromittent organ than a kind of hose to direct the ejaculations onto the female.
They all grew up in the San Fernando Valley.
#65, Susannah: “Dream on. The squid is underwater and they don’t wash off.”
Hey, anybody who’s ever had five or six too many knows that soap washes out a lot of things.
Wow. Will the baby squid get born from the dead body? That would be the ultimate alien invasion.
So in fact it’s more specifically interspecies felching?
Parasitic sperm will haunt my nightmares for quite some time now.