Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation (11 page)

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Authors: Olivia Judson

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If males don't usually eat their lovers, what about hermaphrodites? Almost nothing is known about this matter. Many hermaphrodites are platonic cannibals, though, and I can imagine that sometimes, when two individuals meet, one wants nooky but the other wants lunch. Since both parties would want to avoid being eaten, I'd be surprised, though, if it's a common problem. My guess is that whenever sexual cannibalism could be a risk, countermeasures rapidly evolve. For example, if you are most
vulnerable when mating with someone bigger than yourself, you might evolve a horror of larger individuals. It has even been suggested that the risk of cannibalism explains the lightning-fast sex of the hermaphroditic sea slug
Hermissenda crassicornis.
“Slug” hardly conveys the ethereal beauty of this animal. No more than a couple of centimeters long, it looks like a land slug fallen under a powerful enchantment: a delicate, glassy body tinged with pale blue, a fetching orange stripe running down the back of its head, and, lower down, a glorious mass of feathery protrusions as if the animal were wearing a coat covered with foxtails. But when it comes to sex, these creatures don't stand on ceremony. Like knights jousting, the two animals whizz past each other without stopping, lances held out in an effort to knock the other up. Yet although this custom is mighty peculiar, it's not clear that cannibalism is the true cause.
Speaking of peculiar, nothing is as peculiar as you male redback spiders wanting to be cannibalized. The urge is so strong that you sometimes fight for the privilege, one male snatching a rival out of the female's jaws, bundling him in silk as if he were a fly, and then marching into the jaws of doom in his stead. The scene is all the more absurd because you fellows are midgets—one hundred times smaller than the female—so a fight looks like two rabbits dancing around a lion. It goes without saying that such a death wish can evolve only in special circumstances. That is, being eaten must mean you leave more offspring than if you are spared. So far, your species is the only one known to meet this criterion. A male redback who gets himself munched fertilizes more eggs than a male who survives. Why? Remember that spider sex means inserting your pedipalps into the twin orifices on her hairy black underbelly. But even with the tip of your abdomen in her jaws, you can still reach the orifices. And it turns out that
sex takes longer when she's chewing away on you, which gives you the chance to deliver more sperm and thus fertilize more eggs. So your challenge is to make yourself more appetizing.
The secret is picking your moment. Female redbacks aren't greedy; when they're not hungry, they don't eat. If you offer yourself right after she's feasted, forget it. You've got to wait until she gets that mean and hungry look in all eight of her beady little eyes. And then, for what you are about to receive, may your kiddies be truly thankful.

 

I'm afraid we don't know why females in some species become man-eaters while their sisters in closely related species do not. All we can say—and it seems obvious—is that, without exception, sex cannibals are never vegetarians but always predators and that they tend to be larger and stronger than their victims and therefore able to overpower them. Boys, if you have fallen in love with a large, predaceous lady who tries to bite your head off, you may be the dinner as well as the date. If you suspect you could be at risk, you must ask yourself this: do you want to meet your maker now or later?

If the answer's later, then think SAFE SEX: Stealthy Approach, Forceful Embrace, Swift EXit.
If the answer's now, think again: are you mortally sure you will be rewarded? If so, then prepare your last words—and pray your epitaph will be “He was fruitful.”
Girls, eating men without screwing them is just plain wrong. But hey, you only live once. If you like making mincemeat of your lovers, remember that cannibalism is the right choice if and only if you run little risk of remaining a virgin. If that's taken care of—bon appétit!
CRIMES OF PASSION
M
urder, wife beating, rape. Why do they happen? Because some boys won't take no for an answer.
Dear Dr. Tatiana,
 
I'm supposed to be a solitary bee, but I can't get any time to myself. Whenever I poke my proboscis out of my nest, I'm hounded by guys who apparently have nothing better to do than make a nuisance of themselves. They think it's funny to molest me as I'm doing my chores. It's not funny. It's maddening. How can I get them to buzz off?
 
A Girl's Never Alone in Oxford
Male bees and wasps are notorious layabouts. Look at social species—species, such as honeybees or hornets, that live in large nests ruled by a queen. Males laze around while their sisters—
the workers—do the drudgery of gathering food, cleaning the nest, and rearing the young. (Occasionally, workers rebel. In the paper wasp
Polistes dominulus,
workers indulge in “male stuffing.” It's a cruel sport. When a male gets stuffed, he's bitten, kicked, and shoved headfirst into an empty cell in the nest. The stuffer keeps pushing and biting his rear end to stop him from coming out. A male is most likely to get stuffed when a worker arrives back at the nest with food; by the time he's managed to unstuff himself, the food will have been given to deserving members of the nest, like grubs.)
But although social species, with their humming hives, are the darlings of the media, most bees and wasps hail from solitary species like yours. In solitary species, each female reproduces; there are no workers. But there are still layabouts. All too often the female is a supermom—building the nest, laying eggs, supplying provisions for each grub to eat when it hatches—while the male is a feckless deadbeat. This can cause problems. In your case, it means that after a male has breakfasted on nectar, he has a whole day ahead of him with nothing to do but chase the girls.
Yes, it's a bore. Males of your species are not subtle: they start their seduction with a pounce. If a male pounces on you while you are flying, he can knock you to the ground; if you have to fly a gauntlet of males, you could be knocked to the ground once every three seconds, making it a real challenge to collect pollen and nectar to provision your nest. Nevertheless, you should thank your lucky stars. In other species, when idle youths hang about in packs things can get much, much worse.
A female mountain sheep may be chased for miles by packs of eager young rams. This is exhausting and potentially dangerous: to escape she'll often jump to narrow ledges on the cliff face. Still, I bet she's glad she's a mountain sheep. The lie Longue, the biggest island of the Kerguelen archipelago, a cluster of glorified
rocks just north of the Antarctic Circle, is home to a flock of domestic sheep that have been left to their own devices for over thirty years. The result? It makes
Lord of the Flies
look like a teddy bear convention. Ewes are not merely chased but battered to death by gangs of rams. A victim will be pursued until she's too tired to flee, then the rams will try to mount her. They rarely succeed—as one climbs on, another charges and knocks him off—but that's no comfort. Sessions can last for hours, the ewe getting more and more bashed; if she falls in exhaustion, she'll be kicked and butted until she gets up. If, at the end of it all, she's not dead, she risks being finished off by giant petrels. These huge seabirds—they boast a wingspan of more than two meters—have the disgraceful habit of disemboweling weak animals, punching them in the anus with their heavy, hooked beaks.
Ewes are not the only ones to draw the short straw. Female frogs can have a terrible time. Take the quacking frog, an Australian species named for the quacking sounds that males make to attract mates. Like many other frogs, females come to pools to spawn. If all goes well, girl frog meets boy frog, he climbs on her back and wraps his arms around her—a classic froggie hug called amplexus. She releases eggs into the water; he squirts them with sperm. But if she has the misfortune to attract several males, they will push and shove as they jockey for position. At best, fewer of her eggs will be fertilized; at worst, she'll asphyxiate in their embrace. Such tragedies are not unique: female wood frogs who attract several males occasionally drown in the ensuing melee.
But better drowned than dismembered, I say. In some solitary bees and wasps, males emerge from the winter earlier than females do and gather around burrows that females will emerge from. When a female does emerge, she may be dismembered and killed as the boys struggle to possess her. Female yellow dung flies go to fresh cowpats to mate and lay eggs. If they get set upon by
several males they, too, may be torn apart—or drowned in runny excrement. Perhaps dismemberment is better than I thought.
Meanwhile, once a year, female northern elephant seals gather on beaches to give birth, nurse their pups, and fornicate before going back to sea. On many beaches, the biggest males—and when I say big, I mean five meters (sixteen feet) long and weighing over two and a half tons—can keep smaller males out of the main female arena. But these young males are raring to go. If they spot a female making her way back to the sea, they will gallop over to her—and in their desperation to mate, may batter her to death and then fight for the corpse. Hawaiian monk seals, the only wholly tropical seals, are one of the most endangered seals in the world, with perhaps six hundred animals left in the wild. Unfortunately, the biggest threat to their survival is … other Hawaiian monk seals. The main cause of death is attacks by adult males on adult females, who are often mobbed for hours by gangs of amorous males, during which they may be battered to death or badly bitten and then eaten by tiger sharks drawn to the commotion. The problem is so acute that male seals are being rounded up and given drugs to suppress their libidos in an attempt to save the species from extinction.
All this must sound crazy. But the point is that none of the violence is intentional. The boys don't mean to hurt the girls: it doesn't do them any good if a girl dies before she's had their children. So why are they so aggressive? It's a catch-22. Things are most likely to turn sour when crowds of males hang about, all vying for favors from a few passing females. This is particularly likely if males congregate at places females must come to in order to breed or if a few males hold large breeding territories and the others lurk on the fringes. Then, it's nothing ventured, nothing gained: if a fellow stands aside and doffs his cap to a girl, he's guaranteed not to mate with her. Instead, he should rush in and
press his suit. If he can beat off other contenders, he'll have the chance to fertilize her eggs. The trouble is, the same is true for everyone—hence the scrum. If she dies as a result—well, that's too bad. From his point of view, it's as though someone else won her.
From her point of view, the situation obviously looks different. No one wants to be dismembered, drowned, or battered to death, not least because death puts the kibosh on future reproduction. If the risk of coming to an untimely end—or being badly hurt—is appreciable, you'd expect females would evolve countermeasures. It's the usual story. Some females may have attributes that make them less likely to be hassled, hurt, or killed. If these attributes have a genetic basis, the genes involved will spread. Having said that, when a girl is facing many males, there may be little she can do by way of self-defense. Even the greatest warriors can't usually fight off several attackers at once or fight for days without rest.
So what works? A popular solution is to hire a bodyguard. Female yellow dung flies, for example, prefer to mate with large males and are more likely to be left in peace if they do so. Female northern elephant seals who copulate with someone on their way to the ocean are then escorted down the beach—and are less likely to be attacked by anybody else. Among water striders—seemingly delicate insects that skate about on the surfaces of ponds and streams—a female will fight to rid herself of a pesky male if few males are around. If, however, fighting off one fellow will just mean hassle from another and another and another, she accepts whoever comes along first. His presence will squelch the ardor of others. Bodyguards can be useful even when one's life is not at risk: when escorted by a male, female pheasants and pigeons spend more time eating and less time checking for predators or fending off other males than when they are on their own.
But you, my busy friend, don't need a bodyguard to protect you from harassment. In your species, males buzz about at predictable times and places. Better yet, there is no single place that you must go to. This means boys can't lie in wait at a place you can't avoid, so you can simply steer clear of them. If they're out in force at one bed of flowers, visit another. That's what most girls in your species do.
And cheer up: there are occasions when the pack mentality can be turned to a girl's advantage. Take the beewolf
Philanthus basilaris.
Beewolves are solitary wasps that hunt other bees and wasps. The males cluster together, each defending a small territory and making a pest of himself by chasing every passing insect in the hopes of finding the girl of his dreams. Poor bastards. They think they're going to get laid, but instead they get laid to rest. Females exact a grisly revenge for unwanted attentions. Girls who have already mated sometimes visit male aggregations not to make dreams come true but to provide for their families: they come to collect males to put into their nests for the grubs to eat when they hatch. With males so eager to mate, it's easy pickings. And a fellow who falls into the arms of one of these dames will discover a fate worse than death. He'll be stung until he's paralyzed but not dead—grubs like fresh meat—and then sealed into the nest until the grubs are ready to eat him alive. Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served cold.
Dear Dr. Tatiana,
 
I'm an Australian seaweed fly, and I'm a Sensitive New Age Guy. I know that no means no—but that doesn't get me anywhere. The girls in my species are tough Sheilas: whenever I make friendly
overtures I get beaten up. Why are they so hostile, and is there anything I can do about it?
 
Mr. Nice Is Mr. Frustrated in Mallacoota Bay
To hell with political correctness. In your species, no means yes. The girls are aggressive because they want you to overpower them; indeed, they refuse to have sex with anyone who cannot. So if you want to get some rumpy-pumpy, you're going to have to put up with being kicked and bucked until your partner submits to you.
For some creatures, violent sex is the norm. Crabeater seals—which, incidentally, eat not crabs but krill, small shrimp that live by the hundreds of millions in the chilly waters around Antarctica—bite each other savagely during sex, and both animals often end up drenched in blood. But although this looks nasty, it's like a human raking fingernails down her lover's back: the wounds aren't serious and there doesn't seem to be anything sinister going on. Why do they do it? Well, there's no accounting for taste.
A taste for violence has its hazards, of course. Rough love leaves many animals scarred by the experience. Elderly bull crabeater seals have scars all over their heads from years of female affection. When a bison bull mounts a cow, his front hooves strike her back, sometimes removing bits of skin. By the time she celebrates her eighth birthday, she'll probably have a couple of bald spots as a result. (During copulation, she has to bear the full weight of her massive lover: as he ejaculates, he goes into a spasm that brings his rear hooves off the ground.) Among dugongs, vegetarian sea mammals that snuffle around beds of sea grass using horny pads on their lower lips to yank plants up by the roots, females occasionally sport scars on their backs from the male's clumsy lovemaking.
Worse, accidents happen. In the pygmy salamander, the male plunges barbed teeth into the female's neck before presenting his packet of sperm; on occasion, he gets stuck and cannot tear himself away. Among southern elephant seals—the males are even bigger than northern ones, reaching six meters (twenty feet) and weighing about four tons—a careless bull may bite the cow on the head instead of the neck, killing her by crushing her skull. Dog mink occasionally make a similar mistake, piercing the base of the bitch's brain instead of grabbing the scruff of her neck. A male sea otter's idea of a kiss is a bite on the nose; this can be lethal if the wound gets infected.
Such disasters grab attention: bad news always does. But it's important to keep things in perspective. The crucial difference between these accidents and those at the hands of a libidinous mob is that these accidents are not a result of males acting in their self-interest. A male who goes about crushing his lovers' skulls won't leave many offspring. Thus, in species where girls are unlikely to be assaulted by a gang, the risk of being killed during sex will generally be trivial in comparison with the risk of dying in other ways, and avoiding such accidents will be a matter of luck, not evolution. That's because genes that could protect you from having your skull crushed—for instance, genes that build stronger skulls—won't spread if skull crushing is vanishingly rare.
But although dead girls can't have kids, injured girls might—it depends on the injury. So perhaps these accidents are more pernicious than they seem: what's to stop a fellow from thrashing a girl within an inch of her life, especially if a walloping puts her off sex and stops her cheating on him? Girls, fear not, they wouldn't get away with it for long. If, for whatever reason, lovemaking carried a real risk of serious injury, you would again expect the rapid evolution of traits that protect you from harm.

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