Fatherhood leads to a drop in testosterone.

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From The New York Times:

This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children. Experts say the research has implications for understanding the biology of fatherhood, hormone roles in men and even health issues like prostate cancer.

“The real take-home message,” said Peter Ellison, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who was not involved in the study, is that “male parental care is important. It’s important enough that it’s actually shaped the physiology of men.”

Read the rest of the article here.

New Spiderman gay?

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From Mail Online (thanks for passing it along Rayka!):

Marvel Comics reveals the new Spider Man is black - and he could be gay in the future.

He started life as a white science geek living with his uncle.

But now to reflect the racial changes in America Spider Man has been given a makeover - as a half black half Latino teen.

Miles Morales has replaced Peter Parker as the face behind the famous webbed mask, Marvel Comics has revealed.

In the latest edition of the Ultimate Fallout series he pulls back the disguise and shows his face for the first time.

Fans will have to wait until the official Spider Man relaunch next month to find out how he came to be the superhero.

But another surprise could be in the pipeline after his creators said that in the future they would not rule out making him gay.

Read the rest of the article about Spiderman's future here.

Loudest penis in the animal kingdom.

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From Wired:

Bug’s Penis Makes Loudest Animal Sound.

This minuscule water boatman might be smaller than a drawing pin, but it’s also the loudest animal on the planet. Well, relative to its body size, at least.

The male lesser water boatman, aka Micronecta scholtzi, can create mating calls as loud as 99.2 decibels, which is the equivalent of sitting in the front row of a loud, full-blown orchestra, or standing 15 meters away from a hurtling freight train.

“Remarkably,” said Stratchclyde University’s James Windmill in a press release, “even though 99 percent of sound is lost when transferring from water to air, the song is so loud that a person walking along the bank can actually hear these tiny creatures singing from the bottom of the river.”

To make this colossal acoustic din, the male water boatman rubs his penis (or “genitalia appendage”) against the ridged surface of his abdomen, like a wooden spoon against a washboard. Size doesn’t matter for this tiny marine animal, though, as the whole area measures about 50 micrometers across — roughly the width of a human hair.

The act of rubbing two body parts together to make a noise is called stridulation, and is seen in insects from grasshoppers to spiders. The only known mammal to stridulate is the streaked tenrec, a spiky hedgehog-like critter from Madagascar that rubs its quills together.

Windmill and his team looked at lots of marine and terrestrial creatures and measured their different auditory outbursts in “acoustic pressure” to find out how loud animals are in relation to their body size.

So while an African elephant’s rumbling call can be 117 decibels, if the trunked beast was reduced to the size of a water boatman, the marine insect would far outclass it. As would, it turns out, a snapping shrimp, a speckled bush cricket, a bronze dainty frog, an alligator and a human.

Homosexuality in the wild - zebra finches.

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From the BBC:

Homosexual zebra finches form long-term bond.

Same-sex pairs of monogamous birds are just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with a member of the opposite sex.

The insight comes from a study of zebra finches - highly vocal, colourful birds that sing to their mates, a performance thought to strengthen the pair's bond.

Scientists found that same-sex pairs of finches sang to and preened each other just like heterosexual pairs.

The study is reported in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology. A displaying pair of king penguins Male king penguins have been seen to "flirt" with other males in the colony

Lead researcher Julie Elie from the University of California Berkeley said that the research showed that "relationships in animals can be more complicated than just a male and a female who meet and reproduce, even in birds".

Dr Elie and her colleagues are interested in zebra finches' behaviour. The birds establish life-long relationships and are highly social; males sing to their mates, the birds preen each other and pairs share a nest.

Read the rest of the article here.

And more on homosexuality in the wild, from a previous post: here.

Man has hysterectomy.

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From the Telegraph:

An Indian farmer and father of two had a hysterectomy after doctors discovered a "full female reproductive system" in his lower abdomen. The Indian man, identified as Ryalu, was admitted to a hospital near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, after complaining of severe stomach pains.

Doctors suspected a normal hernia, but when they carried out an exploratory operation they were shocked to discover it had been caused by a female uterus, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, a cervix and underdeveloped vaginal tissue.

Dr Pramod Kumar Shrivastava, a surgeon at the Chhindwara district hospital said the patient had external male organs, was fit from working in the fields, and lived a normal life.

"Usually the contents of the Hernia Sac are abdomen organs like large intestines and small intestines but when we operated on the patient we were surprised to find female reproductive organs. We have removed the organs through a hysterectomy and repaired the hernia.

"The sac contained quite developed uterus, both the ovaries, Fallopian tubes, cervix and a tissue which is undeveloped but apparently looks like vaginal tissue," he explained.

The man had not suffered any problems until the stomach pains which led him to hospital. Although he is medically a hermaphrodite, his hormones and sexuality are clearly male, he said.

"The external reproductive organs of the patient were masculine and he has no problems whatsoever with his sexuality. He had functional male genitals and there was no formation of breasts in the patient. It's an embryological accident at the time of embryonic formation," he said.

The patient, who was said to be as "stunned" as his doctors at the discovery, is recovering in hospital and is being supported by his family.

Buried Treasure: first porn?

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From Dodson and Ross:

The year was 1929, and while it may have been a bad year for the economy, it was a red letter year for animation. That was the year that the first porn cartoon, Buried Treasure, was made. This short, animated feature concerns the exploits of Eveready Harton, and his attempt to bury his "treasure" in every cozy orifice that he finds - be it that of man, woman, donkey, or cow. Of course, what else can you do when you're stuck as a castaway on "Pecker" island.

The movie was so controversial that US labs refused to process it; so, it was developed in Cuba instead. Rumor has it that it was made in the late 20s for a private party honoring the venerable animator Winston McCay. And according to Walt Disney animator Ward Kimball:

"The first porno-cartoon was made in New York. It was called "Eveready Harton" and was made in the late 20's, silent, of course—by three studios. Each one did a section of it without telling the other studios what they were doing. Studio A finished the first part and gave the last drawing to Studio B [...] Involved were Max Fleischer, Paul Terry, and the Mutt and Jeff studio. They didn't see the finished product till the night of the big show. A couple of guys who were there tell me the laughter almost blew the top off the hotel where they were screening it..."

Later, the work was attributed to the efforts of George Stallings, George Canata, Rudy Zamora, Sr., and Walter Lantz. One thing I noticed while watching this film and The First American Porn Film: "A Free Ride" Circa 1915 was how male defined porn was from the outset. In this film, it is all about the dick with no clit in sight. At least, this movie takes a rather satirical view of the whole thing. And it is rather amusing to see the aptly named Eveready being led around by his fifth appendage. So, here is the first porn cartoon - what your great-great-grandparents used for wanking material.


Boner control on Reddit.

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A Reddit used asks:

Men of reddit, how hard is it to control a boner?

And a sample response:

I'm essentially my penis' guidance counselor. I can give it recommendations, and occasionally I'll be able to help it get where it wants to go, but realistically it's going to do what it wants to do.

Read more here.

inSPOT now in BC.

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From the CBC:

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control is launching an online partner notification service for people diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection.
"Notifying sexual partners that they may have been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection so they can get tested is a critical component of disease prevention and control," said Dr. Mark Gilbert, a physician epidemiologist with the BCCDC.
"And now, thanks to inSPOT, it just got easier in British Columbia."
The inSPOT website allows users to tell their sexual partners to get tested for STIs by email through an electronic postcard.
The e-cards, which can be sent anonymously, are pithy and to the point.
"Sometimes there are strings attached," reads one. "I got diagnosed with STDs since we were together. Get checked out soon."
Another says: "It's not what you brought to the party, it's what you left with. I left with an STI. You might have, too. Get checked out soon."
E-cards can be sent to up to six partners at a time, and users have the option of including a personal message.
"Anyone can use inSPOT. It doesn’t require visitors to login or register to use the service," Gilbert said. "It’s free, simple and easy to use."
Developed in San Francisco in 2004, inSPOT also provides information related to specific STIs and treatment, as well as a list of local STI and HIV testing sites.
The inSPOT website is being used throughout North America, and has already been customized for Ottawa and Toronto.
Officials say the service is not intended to act in place of telling sexual partners in person or with the assistance of a public health nurse, but is "an additional tool people can use to notify their partners when they know their partners' email addresses."

Tell a partner via the inSPOT site here.

More about the program here.

Much more on monogamy.

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Monogamy (or more accurately, non-monogamy) has become a hot-button issue in the last couple of years. While various forms of non-monogamy have been around for millennia in non-Western cultures, mainstream Western culture has historically only sanctioned relationships that are sexually and socially monogamous. Non-monogamous relationships have been (and still are) considered taboo, even resulting in legal penalties, despite the fact that a large proportion of people who are in apparently monogamous relationships are not actually sexually monogamous.

The publication of the book Sex at Dawn a couple of years blew the top off this issue. I posted an interview with one of the authours, Dr. Christopher Ryan, earlier this year (link here). Based on a review of all the available evidence, he and his co-authour claim that monogamy is not a natural human inclination or behaviour. Since the publication of Sex at Dawn, many articles have come out questioning the feasibility of monogamy for many people, including the piece a few posts down from The New York Times.

Recently, The Slate published a bunch of great articles on monogamy. If this is an issue that interests you, the articles are recommended reading. You can find them here.

Dan Savage on monogamy.

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From a recent piece by Mark Oppenheimer for The New York Times about Dan Savage and his views on monogamy:

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy. “I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

Read the rest of the piece, which has stirred up substantial controversy, here.