Hee hee. I had to write about this just for the title. Moving on…
Black Tiger Prawns are an important commercial aquaculture species. However, researchers have noticed that they don’t seem to be as prolific if they’re bred in captivity. Specifically, they just don’t seem to want to screw each other nearly as much as they do in the wild. Changing around tank conditions, water conditions, etc just wasn’t working – so scientists needed a new method to figure out what’s wrong.
Here’s what’s strange – wild prawns, caught and put in the aquaculture system, breed like it’s their business. They get it on like donkey kong. But prawns raised in captivity just don’t feel the passion.
<img src=“http://msnbcmedia4.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/090305-prawn-02.hmedium.jpg” width=200 style=“float:right; margin:10px 10px 10px 10px” alt=“Photo: Erika Fish c/o QUT”>So, to figure out why, Gay Marsden, a postgraduate student researcher at Queensland University of Technology, spent two months filming prawnography to see what was different between the wild caught and captive bred prawns.
After hours of sex tapes, she noticed that the wild males tended to leap on their women just after the girls molted, when they were easiest to penetrate. The captive boys, however, seemed to have no interest in their soft-bodied femmes.
Marsden hypothesized that the girls aren’t giving off the same amount of pheromones to tell the guys to come and get some, and that the males, in turn, seem less sensitive even when the girls do produce the chemical cues. Why this is, however, she has no idea.
She’s now looking into nutrition and hormones (in studies like this one) to get the captive-bred prawns to act like the frisky crustaceans they should be. Something, she believes, is throwing off their endocrine system, and she’s determined to figure it out.
That means, of course, more sex and videotapes. More Prawnography.
I just want to know how I can get a job that utilizes something as cool sounding as that. And I’d like to note an incredible first: a sex tape not leaked to the media. Amazing.
