Cont'd Ed: The birds and the bees

From the Illustrated Book of Sexual Records a compendium of interesting, and quite often revolting, sexual factoids including:

• Best known example of sex change
• Most copious ejaculators
• Bestiality: Least likely animals
• Most vicious sex laws
• Rarest orgasmic technique
• Longest sustained intercourse

Especially eye catching was this bit on the most vicious form of intercourse:

A number of female insects eat their husbands during the coital act. It has been argued that in the praying mantis, for example, the male can only copulate successfully when half his head has been eaten away - something to do with releasing nervous inhibitions! It has been pointed out that mantises will mate satisfactorily in the terrarium if the female's terrible forelimbs are tied before she is introduced to the male - so perhaps cannibalism is not essential to coitus. The females among many insect-eating Diptera are also apt to gnaw away at their husbands, and a variety of other fates may await the amorous male. In the fly Serromyia femorata, of the family Ceratopogonidae, mating takes place with the two ventral surfaces together and the mouthparts touching. At the end of mating, the female sucks out the body content of the male through the mouth. In the Asilidae, the male sometimes eats the female during or after mating.

posted by dorna! @ 8:34 am