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Posts with tag: flatworms | Return to ScienceNewsBlog.com Homepage
Flatworm's Penis Fencing
Here's a video showing flatworm's penis fencing. Flatworms have both male and female sex organs and they fight to determine who gets to be the male and who gets to be the female. The winner of the fight is the flatworm that is able to pierce the other flatworm with one of its penises. You can read a little more about it here on PBS.org.
During penis fencing, each flatworm tries to pierce the skin of the other using one of its penises. The first to succeed becomes the de facto male, delivering its sperm into the other, the de facto female. For the flatworms, this contest is serious business. Mating is a fight because the worm that assumes the female role then must expend considerable energy caring for the developing eggs.
Posted on September 10, 2008
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Penis Fencing Oyster Leeches
Australian scientists have discovered a flatworm that has a bizarre sex ritual that looks like penis fencing. The flatworm also squirt digestive juices into oysters and barnacles and then suck out the flesh. The Syndney Morning Herald reports on these creatures discovered in Botany Bay.
WHAT is spineless, loves oysters, wears beige with purple flecks and fences with its penis?
It might sound like the first half of a joke about a despised profession but in fact such a creature has just been discovered in the waters of Botany Bay.
Scientists from the University of NSW will this week announce the discovery of a new species of flatworm found at a depth of about three metres underneath Kurnell Pier.
Named Imogine lateotentare, the creature is a member of the little understood group of predators commonly known as oyster leeches. Its discovery is to be announced in the Journal of Natural History.
More about these flatworms can be found on UPI and Sploid.
Posted on March 31, 2006
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