"Blow Job" Bats

For how thoroughly enjoyable the experience is, oral sex is actually surprising rare in the animal kingdom. Apart from humans (who obviously do our fair share), our close relatives the primates are the only other members of the animal kingdom known to partake… until recently.

Researchers recently observed oral sex for the first time in a non-primate species. During sex, the female short-nosed fruit bat has been observed licking the genitals of their partner.

(Photo Credits: AAAS)

Libiao Zhang and his colleagues from the Guangdong Entomological Institute in China, have been studying the mating behavior of the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx). In the lab, they paired males and females in cages that mimicked their natural environment and infrared cameras beamed video of the bats’ exploits back to Zhang and his team at the lab.

For the most part, the animals reacted exactly as they had expected them to. The males of the species built tents made out of Chinese fan-palm leaves in order to attract the females. Both males and females groomed each other during their courtship. Then came the skinemax aspect, after the male bat mounted the female from behind, she bent over and began licking his penis.

According to the original report on PlosONE, of the 20 observed mating bat pairs, 14 of the females performed fellatio on the males they were with. The male bats never “withdrew” from the females while being licked. Authors of the study found that the longer a female performed fellatio on the male, the longer copulation lasted. According to the AAAS article, “for each second of licking, the female bats gained 6 seconds of copulations).

Zhang and his team speculate that the oral sex may prolong intercourse by increasing lubrication and helping maintain the males’ erection. The fellating females mated for an average of 4 minutes, nearly twice as long as their non-fellating counterparts.

Frans de Waal, a primatologiost at Emory University who has worked extensively with bonobos (the primate to partake in fellatio most frequently) announces that “the finding of fellatio in bats is exciting news.” He believes that the reason oral sex is rarely mentioned is due to the societal shyness about the issue.

(After what happened to Professor Dr. Dylan Evans at the University College, Cork, Ireland, when he showed his co-worker this study, I’m inclined to think that Mr. de Waal may be right.)

(Photo Credit: Huffington Post)

Regardless of societal objections, Paul Vasey, a behavioral scientist from the University of Lethbridge thinks that this discovery provides a unique opportunity to test some theories about the evolutionary role of oral sex.

Although it’s possible that bats are just being sexually playful like their human and bonobo counterparts, the discovery still suggests that there may be a biological advantage to fellatio (this line PROBABLY won’t work on your girlfriend the next time she’s not in the mood… but hey, it’s worth a try).

FOOTNOTE: Below is a particularly amusing/disturbing section from the original report about the…(um)… dynamics between males and females during bat-sex. (Not the delicious, Bruce Wayne kind).

“Sometimes the female appeared to resist, or even escaped by accident, and then the male would follow her until copulation was completed. In two instances, the female evaded the male for about eight to 25 seconds and turned to bite the male, but later the male followed her until mating was completed. In four instances, the female appeared to resist the male's approaches, but did not evade successfully, and copulations were eventually completed.”

I find myself laughing at the thought of the next Law & Order spin-off… Bats: SVU.

Multi-Cellular Life Thrives in a Permanent No-Oxygen Environment!

In my last post, I talked about the organisms that can, amazingly, thrive without any source of light. The deep sea is the home to hundreds of extremophiles (organisms that flourish in extreme environments) but recently, researches found something that puts even the chemosynthetic life on the hydrothermal vents to shame.

Scientists and researchers previously thought that only single-celled organisms could survive in the anoxic (oxygen deprived) areas of the deep ocean. Even when multi-cellular organisms were found in these areas, they were assumed to have sunk from the oxygen-filled waters of higher ocean zones.
Roberto Danovaro, et al, at BMC Biology discovered the first multi-cellular animals that survive in these zero oxygen environments. These organisms live and reproduce entirely without oxygen. Over the past ten years, Italian and Danish scientists sent multiple expeditions to collect sediment from the hypersaline anoxic basins of the Mediterranean Sea, located almost two miles below the ocean surface. Ecosystems like these are permanently devoid of oxygen and, until recently, have had completely unexplored biodiversity.

Danovaro and his team discovered that the sediments collected from the L’Atalante basin, are inhabited by three distinct multi-cellular species of the phylum Loricifera completely new to science. Although researchers don’t completely understand the biochemistry of these new organisms, they know that these organisms lack mitochondria (the organelle present in most animals cells and is sometimes called the cell’s “powerhouse”). Instead, these organisms seem to have organelles called hydrogenosomes that use anaerobic chemistry and are usually associated with endosymbiotic prokaryotes.

This first evidence of a complete life cycle for a multi-cellular organism in a no oxygen environment is very compelling. It also makes the idea of complex life forms on oxygen-free planets seem much less like a giant leap of faith and more like a distinct possibility.

(For more information and for the original photos see BMC Biology.)

Hydrothermal Vents: The Key to Life On and Off the Earth?

For countless years, scientists believed the assumption that all the life on Earth was based on ecosystems with photosynthetic organisms (organisms getting energy from sunlight) as their foundation. Even the deep sea creatures that managed to survive in the pitch black zones of the ocean were thought to depend on sun-based food webs. And while it’s true that many deep sea organisms feed on small animals and falling debris from the ocean’s surface, in 1977 a group of scientists discovered an entirely new form of life.

The first hydrothermal vent (also known as a “black smoker”) was discovered in 1977 by the scientists of the Galapagos Reef Expedition. The scientists, who were mapping the bathymetry of the area’s seafloor, came upon the vent surrounded by giant tube worms about eight feet tall. It was an amazing discovery. Up until this point, sedentary organisms weren’t thought to be able to survive in the desolate ocean floor landscape. The seafloor was thought to be so bare, that the group didn’t even have a biologist with them on the expedition.

When Robert Ballard, the Co-Chief Scientist of the historical expedition spoke at a class of mine in college, he said that when they brought the worm back to the surface, they had to confiscate all the alcohol of everyone on the vessel in order to preserve the sample. (No biologist equals no formaldehyde.) The only way to maintain the worm was to submerse it in high-proof liquor and, unfortunately for the members of the cruise, eight feet of worm takes a whole lot of vodka to preserve it. The remaining scientists, though not very pleased to lose their entertainment on the long research cruise, seemed happy to aid in the discovery. John Edmond, the geochemist on the expedition is quoted as saying “We were dancing off the walls…it was a discovery cruise…like Columbus.”

So, how did these miraculous worms survive? How did they even evolve? Well below the 1000 meter depth mark that bids goodbye to the last particles of light from the surface; their ecosystem was thriving despite the seemingly impossible conditions. As it turns out, their proximity to the hydrothermal vents was no coincidence. Here, miles below the surface, a new base to the food web had developed.

The smoking vents are actually towers of crystalline zinc sulfide, blowing sulfur-rich smoke that can reach temperatures of over 700 degrees F. This ecosystem relies not on the photosynthesis of the rest of the world but instead on special chemosynthetic bacteria. These bacteria are the base of the food web for the rest of the vent area, directly and indirectly feeding a whole myriad of species never before seen. Bright red tube worms, blind shrimp, and giant crabs are just some of the more than 300 specially evolved species that exist in these unique vent ecosystems. Geochemist Gisela Winckler says that, “Most of the deep ocean is like a desert, but these vents are oases of life and weirdness.”

The harsh smoke in the waters can have a pH as low as 2.8 (an acidity higher than table vinegar) and biologists have reported seeing “naked snails” that were unable to form their calcium

carbonate shell because of the harsh pH environment.

Despite the environment, these areas are some of the most fertile all the ocean, rivaling coral reefs with their levels of unique biodiversity thanks to the bacteria that feed on the seemingly noxious soup of chemicals spewing from the vents. Deep sea shrimps have been known to number in the millions near these vents.

Since they were discovered, hydrothermal vents have been a focus of origin of life studies. Chemosynthetic ecosystems like these may very well be where the first life on Earth developed. If life can exist in such harsh conditions on earth, could it exist elsewhere in the universe?

This is exactly what many scientists believe.

Jupiter’s ice moon Europa, which is commonly believed by planetary scientists to house a subsurface ocean is a likely candidate for hydrothermal vent activity due to the fact that the planet’s bulk composition is similar to Earth’s. Elsewhere in the Solar System, the Mars rover “Spirit” has been dragging one wheel around the surface of Mars for quite a few years. One of the gouges from the wheel revealed a mineral deposit on the Mars surface. Scientists believe that this mineral deposit was most likely caused by hydrothermal vent activity, implying that a large amount of water was present on the planet’s surface when the vent was active.

While not necessarily little green men, it’s still entirely plausible that since life exists on the desolate seafloor, that life exists in other seemingly impossible environments in our galaxy in the deep, dark reaches of space.

You just shouldn't expect to get abducted by a tube worm.

Though it might not be exactly what he meant, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.