There. Now I have got your attention, I’d like to divert it to the following picture that keeps cropping up on my snapshot page.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX
- Date:
- Wednesday, 18 Mar ch 2009 - 12:40 UTC
He is a powerful man, handsome, obviously prosperous, if a little hairy. Rather like Noah, actually.
She gazes up at him adoringly. The sap rises. The surge of calcium from intracellular stores is so orgasmic you can almost feel it.
So what’s it all about? A dating agency? A soft-porn channel? A marketing campaign for one of
Brian’sJenny’smy books? What? No – it’s a teaser for this paper looking at issues of male fertility raised by drugs used to treat inflammatory bowel disorders. Sex, clearly, sells, even in the most unlikely places.It all reminds me of the time, many years ago, when the world was young, when we received this paper (if you can’t see this, the reference is R. A. Lutz and J. R. Voight, ‘Close Encounter in the Deep’, Nature 371, 563, 1994). Take a look at the picture, a very contrasty shot showing two octopi in a passionate clinch. Both are male, and of different species. The message is that creatures spotted in the abyss are so hungry and lonely that if they encounter anything at all, they either eat it or attempt to have sex with it. These loved-up cephalopods clearly chose the latter course. One of my jobs at the time was to write the press release for Nature : I slavered at the thought of the headline I might write on this item …
BESTIAL SODOMY IN THE ABYSS
I forget what I wrote in the end – suffice it to say that it was significantly toned down – but my friend Amanda Brown, then science correspondent at the Press Association, ran it as
GAY OLD TIME FOR THE LONELY OCTOPUS
Anyway, there we were in an editorial meeting, deciding what picture we might run on the cover of Nature that week. Naturally, our attention turned to this graphic, almost gothic image of fervidly swirling tentacles, as one marauding macho mollusc of a species unknown to science attempted to
feel upinsert his tumescent member into the mantle cavity of another marauding macho mollusc of a quite different species, equally unknown to science.We did wonder whether we might run the picture on the cover.
“Certainly not!” ejaculated a colleague, “It’s … disgusting!”
Sex, even in deep-sea creatures to whom one has not been introduced, and so are unlikely to have the opportunity of being able to watch groping each other on the sofa at parties, clearly inspires revulsion in the
heavinghuman breast. Especially if the subjects are gay. And belong to different species.“Oh, I don’t know,” I found myself saying. “You could always put black rectangles over their eyes.”
Last updated: Wednesday, 18 Mar 2009 - 12:40 UTC
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Comments
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This could be the first time in history that macho, marauding and molluscs have ever appeared in the same sentence. It might be the last. But let’s hope not. The imagery is just too vivid to let go. Disney movie perhaps? No?
I always thought there was something interesting lurking in the depths of your pond.
“Certainly not!” ejaculated a colleague, “It’s … disgusting!”
Not as much as they way this colleague chooses to illustrate his/her opinions. Or was it on purpose to ensure that we’ll keep reading till the very end of the post?
Shirley, you shoulda gone with
The Kraken rapes
Don’t call me Shirley.
The little chick in this post has anonymizing rectangles over its eyes (from the original journal article, it seems!), and there is also an example of Google street view face blurring in a horse , so I think the octopuses with black rectangles would have been totally acceptable =)
Molluscular male molestation?
How rude.
Reminds me of all those reports of homosexual behaviour among seagulls in toxic landfills, or that IgNobel prize-winning report of copulation with a dead duck. Gosh, reading Nature Network is beginning to feel like a trip to Scaryduck.
I’d also like to point out how empowering this ads are for all those men out there affected by inflammatory bowel disorders. To think that, not that long ago, this may have been a potential source of embarrasement, and now it seems like a matter of time until someone starts using it as a pick-up line. Thank you, American Journal of Gastroenterology!
The choice of title for this post worked – made me look!
The choice of title for this post worked – made me look!
Of course you’re not at all sorry that you did, no?
Sorry? No.
@Cristian – IBD has been in the literature for a very long time, apparently.
(Please forgive the tongue-in-cheekness of that linked post.)
Just pile it on, Richard. Don’t let me stop you.
Just don’t be colon me names for posting my
shitstuff in your comments.A colleague of mine left Nature for Cell, which he called ‘The Journal of Penal Servitude’. Before he went, he likened the job of a journal editor to that of ‘separating the increment from the excrement’.