What a bunch of dicks!
(No, I didnât mean it that way, I meant the other way)
(No, the other other one)
Not content with shaving the ends off the penises of our own species, now weâre out circumcising everybody!
So, bluntly, barbs make guppies better rapists.
Behind every good fish penis-barb shaving story there is a grad student reconsidering their career choice.
My fiancee is friends with the researcher, Lucia. I really hope she doesnât get any body-mod ideas from the researchâŚ
The next BoingBoing meme: âJust look at that penis, just look at it!â
The âNature: red in tooth and clawâ school couldnât even imagine how pitifully naive their view would turn out to be. Also (along with parasitoid wasps and eyeball worms) this might be the reason why ânatural theologiansâ as a philosophical affinity group are almost entirely extinct. You donât want to go looking for signs of godâs nature in nature, lest you find themâŚ
Youâd have to agree with P. K. DickâŚ
Guppies forcing themselves on one another - interesting. If guppies only had laws, police, rape centers. Now, as far as worthless science goes this is pretty up there. Myself, I wouldnât be so quick to come down on guppies. Think about it, youâre small, you have no appendages other than fins and a barbed dick and - you have to get it on in the water, like a turbulent stream maybe. Nature gives us what we need and if she thought female guppies needed a voice to call for help she would have provided that too.
Youâre sympathising with the rapey male guppies? Really? After the research found the barbs explicit purpose was for mating with only unreceptive females, and that the male guppies have no problems mating with receptive ones?
Good grief. Rape, here, is well an example of a ânasty naturalâ, but it doesnât make it needed - as you seem to imply - much less defensible.
On that note, surely itâs not hard to have empathy (or, at least, sympathy) for female guppies over the males in this case, is it?
Iâm hoping that you are a parody, built to illustrate the unpleasant sequelae of the âJust World Hypothesisâ; but Iâm inclined to doubt it.
Ummm not feeling sorry for the male guppies.
Nature gives us what we need? I need to ensure the UK government doesnât watch everything I do all the time - whereâs that coming from then?
Guppy rape is a crime of violence, not sex. For the females.
Guppies are not concerned with justice.
well, not âbluntlyâ
Evolution gave them the barbs. They didnât ask to be rapists. Their dads made them that way
A moment on my evolution education soapbox: Evolution doesnât âgiveâ you things. A species evolves and mutations either carry through in their offspring, or not. Evolution does not have a bag of goodies in store. Evolution is not a thing, person, activity, whatever. Itâs a description of a broadly random process, that viewed from the outside, looking back, seems to make some kind of sensible order.
When the barbed willies came along, and ever since, there have probably been all sorts of small variations in guppies that never made it along the chain.
I read a study a long time ago that explored the possibility that the shape of the human penis is related to the suction effect it can create. To suck out other menâs sperm from the vagina. Science!
Iâm a fairly liberal, sympathetic person, but my when it comes to feeling sorry for guppies, I have found a limit to my own empathy. If further study shows that the female guppies suffer some sort of psychological damage, then Iâll gladly rethink my feelings on this subject.
