Bat balls

In my evolution class we are studying adaptations. For the record, an adaptation is any trait that enables an organism to get its genes into the next generation better than the next guy. As I tell my kids, " Reproduction is the name of the Evolutionary Game."
So some people went into cave that had large bat populations and measured the size of the males' testes. Yes, you read that right. And by now you're wondering how bat ball size leads to an evolutionary advantage. Turns out, female bats are whores and will sleep with many men... batmen... male bats...whatever. And as you all know, when it comes to sperm and fertilization There Can Be Only One. The Bat Ball Theory goes something like this: Since the female mates with several males during her estrous cycle (we rednecks call that "in heat"), the male must make sure his sperm is The One. He does this by making the most ejaculate! Hence the big balls. And, interestingly enough, the bigger the size of the roosting population of bats, the bigger the average bat ball size.
 Can't you just see it- Bat sperm everywhere! Ewww, don't think I want to see it.
But....there's a tradeoff. Turns out, it takes a lot of energy for a bat to make all this ejaculate. Since his energy budget is finite, he must give up something. In this case, big bat balls means small bat brains. Yes, the males are happy to give up their brains to have big balls. Maybe the balls are a substitute for the brain?

Just think, someone got money from the federal government to study this, and then paid themselves....
You gotta love our country.

corruption

I guess Jimbo is feeling overjoyed right now... but of course, when I popped over to his site, I saw that he already knew about it.

Funny little things keep happening in my life, Re-Pete with give us a one and only Queen of Obvious Quote, or she'll fall asleep in what looks like an impossible sleeping position. (On that note, let me note that she has stopped insisting that she doesn't sleep at night. I don't know whether to be happy about that or not. It's good because she is growing up, but it's bad for the exact same reason) Or one of my students will say something really goofy, or else I will: odds are even on both of those happening
.
And every time those things happen, I think, "oooh, I should blog that" and then it dissappears into the deep recesses of my brain.

I can tell you, since the hole is fresh in my mouth, that I finally had that tooth pulled. The dentist informed my that the tooth really wasn't worth saving.

Anyways, the extraction was very strange. The dentist came in and asked me if I wanted to be awake or asleep for the process.
Holy shit! my butt clenched all the way through the seat, I think.
I got scared. How bad was it going to be that one of my options was to be asleep for it? Once he told me it wouldn't hurt I was good with being awake. First he shoved one way, then he shoved another way, then he tugged and CRACK! I thought he had broken the tooth. But that was just the sound of it coming out... Turned out to be not so bad at all. Until the anethesia wore off. I'm very thankful for Vicodin....

I hope I never have another tooth pulled...

Last night I loaded Re-Pete up and we headed off to Wally-World to get shampoo, toothbrushes, body wash (it shimmers! I can't wait to try it) and the 700 other HBA things we ran out of all at once that I hate paying for thus making the trip to that horrible place necessary. I did get a coupla nice basil plants, though. My total was a little over a $121.

For stuff that we will only use in one room of the house!

I had a fleeting thought about how expensive everything is and how I needed to watch it.... then Re-Pete said something and I forgot about it.

Until I went to sleep. And dreamed that we lost our house and had to move into an apartment. A really small, old, outdated apartment. With a minuscule bathroom. Just one minuscule bathroom with a medicine cabinet for the mirror and orange tile on the wall. It only had a shower- with a curtain, not a door. You could stand in the shower and brush your teeth over the sink. You could sit on the toilet and spit into the sink, too. The rest of the place had wood paneling on the walls. Sigh.
Lots of cabinets in the kitchen, but they were all too high for me to reach. I woke up right after I was filled with dread- I had forgotten all the silverware at my house and had nothing to eat with.

Useless Information #1010

In the beginning, actually in your beginning, say a few days into gestation, you were a tiny little ball of cells, hollow, each one identical still. A blastosphere. Eventually, one side of the ball caved in, like an under inflated kickball, thus becoming a blastopore.

Now, in the lower animals, this blastopore becomes the opening for the digestive system. The only opening. These animals have two-way digestion- food goes in and out the same hole.

In deuterostomes (us, sea urchins,etc), however, this opening becomes the anus. The first thing you ever were was an anus.

Some people stopped right there, didn't they?

Useless Information Part 1

I was thinking, what's the good in having a Blog title like my own, without having some kind of weekly thingy about, well, useless pieces of information.
Now, we gather useless information about people all the time. I learned, for instance, some 15 years ago, that my friend Russ has one nipple that's an outey and one that's an inney. I don't know how I found that out, but there it is- stuck in my head, unforgettable. Even when I'm really, really old and ate up with Alzheimer's I'll probably still remember that Russ' inney nipple. And now, you will too.

Your Welcome.

But I thought I would start a regular event- Useless Information. I decided to start with Useless World Records. Folks, I hit the Mother Load on my first Google click.

Sheesh- did you know that the longest tapeworm from a human was 37 feet, from a Sally Mae Wallace of Great Grits, Mississippi?
Damn, that's long. (How long, you say?) Consider this- the human alimentary canal is about 30 feet (bigger person=longer, duh) That's from mouth to anus, guys. The small intestine is about 25 feet. So Sally Mae had 37 feet of it in her, loop-de-looping around.
I wonder how tall she was?
Anyway, My car is about 15 feet long, which means the tape worm could almost wrap completely around it. At which point I would trade that fucker in 'cuz there's no way in Hell I'm driving it again.

Guess how they got it out of her- go ahead. I'll wait.

Yep, her mouth!!!! It came out in one piece. Ewwww.

So there you have it, my first installment of a (hope-t0-be) regular installment- Useless bits of info for you.

Hey, if you've got some useless info you'd care to leave here, go ahead. Want to know something about a particular subject? Let me know in the comments.

And if you would like to see more bits of Gross World records, go here, but don't say I didn't warn you....