Sex Ed.
Uploaded by CLeos on Apr 07, 2002
At some point during your youth, your parents probably took you aside and after several minutes of blushing and throat-clearing gave you the Reader's Digest version of the birds and bees. (The folks apparently never realized that you had learned about sex in far more detail several years earlier from a friend in your preschool finger painting class.) But just what did we learn about the actual birds and bees, not to mention the thousands of other species of animals that share the Earth with us? They preen, they strut, they lure and, if all goes as planned, they have sex. You might be surprised by some of the following sexual facts and oddities concerning members of the wild kingdom.
Unless that kid in your preschool class already covered this material.
Warning: Some of these tidbits are not for the faint of heart. If you haven't had the "talk" yet, you might want to be accompanied by an adult before you proceed.
Perhaps the most astounding part of sex in the animal world is the sheer size of some of the sex parts themselves. Were you aware that one testicle of the average Blue whale can weigh up to 100 pounds? You can imagine the problems this causes. This startling fact might explain why you almost never see a Blue whale wearing shorts in public.
Whales also hold the record for having the largest penises. A fact which they never fail to mention at parties, by the way. In large Rorqual whales the penis can be up to 10 feet long, with a diameter of up to one foot. Female Rorqual whales are notoriously cheery. Now you know why.
But bigger isn't always better, necessarily. It is also interesting to note that insects hold their own record as well. If the largest animals have the largest sexual organs, it would follow that the smallest animals, insects, possess the most diminutive. While too small to be measured precisely, it is estimated that the smallest penis on the Earth is a fraction of a thousandth of an inch in size. Ladies, this will be welcome news to that insecure husband or boyfriend.
And now the answer to that other question on your mind. Which animal is the proud owner of the longest sperm? Oddly, in this case, sperm size is not related to the size of the animal. In fact, the longest sperm amongst the mammals is produced...