{"id":1493,"date":"2003-09-26T04:31:34","date_gmt":"2003-09-26T08:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2003\/09\/26\/are-you-curious-about-penis-fencing-fl"},"modified":"2003-09-26T04:31:34","modified_gmt":"2003-09-26T08:31:34","slug":"are-you-curious-about-penis-fencing-flatworms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2003\/09\/26\/are-you-curious-about-penis-fencing-flatworms\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you Curious about Penis-fencing Flatworms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

I fell for this one 30 years ago, when it was called "The Biological Basis of
\n Human Sexuality." We knew they wouldn’t be showing stag films
\n in a Harvard biology course, unless they were about the horned rather
\n than the horny variety.  However, by the third week we would have
\n been happy with stags, or any mammals for that matter. It turned
\n out the biological basis of the title rarely involved creatures more
\n complex than insects, and was largely confinded to microscopic multicelled
\n organisms and how they procreate. The professor seemed to take a malicious
\n delight in our obvious disappointment and piled on the zygotes and mitochondriae.
\n Classic bait and switch.<\/p>\n

It looks like this year’s version hasn’t changed much, although it seems to have a little more truth in advertising, and a blog.
\n   Or maybe professors these days are just a little slicker with the
\n old B & S.  Anyway here are some teasers from the class Blog
\n for Biology H95 fi:<\/a><\/p>\n

Are you curious about penis-fencing flatworms . . . voracious
\n female spiders who
\n demand
\n their
\n mates offer
\n themselves
\n as
\n a
\n nuptial meal
\n . .
\n . sneaker male fish who gain a reproductive advantage by virtue of
\n stealth and oversized testes . . . chaining behaviors in hermaphroditic
\n sea slugs
\n . . . male birds who are virtually flightless by virtue of their
\n sexual ornaments . . . female fruit flies who have evolved defenses to
\n counteract
\n the toxic seminal fluids their mates provide? Then maybe you’ve been
\n looking for Biology 95hfi: Sex: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
\n About It and Then Some <\/p>\n

from the Sex Tutorial Weblog<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fell for this one 30 years ago, when it was called "The Biological Basis of Human Sexuality." We knew they wouldn’t be showing stag films in a Harvard biology course, unless they were about the horned rather than the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}