fair warning: this post might not be for the faint of heart, but i had to share it b/c it's completely ridiculous and fascinating. the other evening i was reading the september 09 national geographic in the bathroom (where i get most of my magazine reading done) and i started reading a saucy little article about orchids called 'love and lies'.  that's right, 'love and lies.'  if it sounds like the title of a harlequin romance mass market paperback, well, it read like one. to give you an idea of the angle the author took, the tagline under the title read:

"How do you spread your genes around when you're stuck in one place? By tricking animals, including us, into falling in love."

the article focused on the procreative habits of orchids. which sounds interesting enough i guess, though not necessarily novel. what little i'd heard of orchids in the past (primarily from the spike jonze movie 'adaptation') was all pretty interesting. and the article stayed at about that level of interestingness -- pretty -- until about 2/3 of the way thru it. and then it blew my mind.

[i'm quoting directly from national geographic from here on out, and it does get a bit graphic. but only in a national geographic kind of way. and not in the 'topless tribes of sub-saharan africa' national geographic kind of way. just in a 'replenish the earth' kind of way.]

If it's starting to sound as though I don't trust orchids, that's because I've seen what they can do to some of my fellow animals. There's a video on YouTube -- a riveting snippet of interspecies porn -- in which you can watch a wasp be utterly bamboozled, and then humiliated, by an Australian tongue orchid. The tongue orchid (Cryptostylis) lures its pollinator by deploying a scent closely resembling the pheromone of the female wasp (Lissopimpla excelsa). The male wasp alights on the tonguelike labellum, tail first, and commences to copulate with the flower, probing its interior with the tip of his abdomen until it bumps into the sticky pollinia, which attach themselves to the insect's posterior like a pair of yellow tails.

Having to play pin the tail on the pollinator is only the beginning of the wasp's humiliation. For with the tongue orchid we have passed beyond pseudocopulation into a realm even more perverse: More often than not, the wasp, in the throes of his misguided sexual exertions, actually ejaculates onto the flower.

Surely this represents the height of maladaptive behavior, and natural selection could be expected to deal harshly with a creature foolish enough to squander its genes having sex with a flower. ("Costly sperm wastage," is how the literature describes it.) That would be bad news for both the wasp and the orchid that depends on him. But as with so much else in the bizarre world of orchid sex, the matter is not quite so simple.

It appears that in some insect species, such as Lissopimpla excelsa, females can reproduce with or without sperm from a male. With it, they produce the usual ratio of male and female offspring; without sperm, they produce only male offspring. How convenient—for the tongue orchid, that is. By inducing wasps to waste their sperm on its flowers, tongue orchids are decreasing the amount of sperm available to female wasps, thereby assuring themselves an even larger population of pollinators. Not only that, but the overabundance of male wasps increases competition for females, which makes the desperate wasps less picky in their choice of mates and that much more likely to fall for a flower.

What about the poor wasp? Why hasn't natural selection killed off an insect so dumb as to have sex with flowers? The best explanation I've heard is from John Alcock, who says that although the wasp may occasionally waste his genes on a plant, his "extreme sexual enthusiasm" is still a better reproductive strategy for an insect than being cautious about one's choice of mate. On balance, having sex with anything that moves yields more offspring, even if it also leads to occasional romantic disaster.

come on, seriously?! a stem fatale?! a femme petale?! a flower with a survival mechanism based on attraction, lust, deception, and ultimately the manipulation of the procreative habits of not just another floral species, but that of flying, flapping, brain-laden fauna?  how ridiculous is that! so complex and mischievous. it's like the plot of some scary, sexy movie which, let's be honest, would probably star kate beckinsale. only it would be way better than any movie she's ever done (except serendipity, obviously). it would probably resurrect her career. anyways, this probably just makes me a complete nerd, which i'm okay with. speaking of, if anybody knows anybody who would want to pay me to make sexy nature documentaries, i'm available. and now if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna go re-read that last paragraph. i'm pretty sure there is a good metaphor for human single life in there somewhere. -d

so apparently the scientists in budapest have created software that can figure out what your dog is saying.  i don't really care, so long as all dogs say this all the time.

ha!  crazy psycho pooches.  here's the full story.  (from Gizmodo) -d

some marvelous things i meant to post friday, but didn't because i went and saw stardust (above) instead.  which, by the way, was ridiculously fun.

- consumer reports is running out of things to review. (consumer reports)

- there are so many things i could say about this little piece of amazingness.  suffice it to say, they don't make toys (or theme songs) like they used to. ------->

- a delightfully third world approach to illiteracy. (bbc)

- sonoma county, 1932: "welcome, girls of the farming community.  my, those are wonderfully nice big white eggs."  (internet archive)

- no fair.  in santa monica all we get are hypodermic needles and kelp.  (reuters)

- headphones are selfish.  especially when you're riding a bike.  (seriously though, i need one of these.)  (popgadget)

- just in case you missed last weekend's meteor showers, on august 28 mother nature will do you one better: a total eclipse of the moon. (nasa)

- some stc previews for this weekend. (soundtrack channel)

- and then there was this.  (thanks michael joel.)  happy monday.  -d

- yesterday was veronica's birthday.  we miss you already.
- it's a woot-off!
- i wish i had a real-life transformer.
- i also wish i had one of these, even if only to have a reason to sing that catchy theme song.
- this------------> man, i don't even know what to do with this:
- one hundred and one 10-minute recipes.  and some of them don't even sound gross.
- i know a lot of you use gmail.  here's 10 really good ways to make it a whole lot better.
- kent posted a blog about all the global warming hype, which spawned a really interesting comment thread.
- anne and sam made it to ohio, the allers made it to breastfeeding class, and kare, jer and the boys made some friends.

- and here are your movie previews for this weekend.  -d

as you may have heard, last april astronaut suni williams competed in the boston marathon - from space.  she had qualified for it whilst still here on earth, but ended up being on the space station for the date of the actual race.  what can you do?  so they let her run it on a treadmill.  as a follow-up, the new yorker printed the following as 'excerpts' from the log of one of her fellow space station inhabitants, russian cosmonaut fyodor yurchikhin.  totally cracked me up.  enjoy. -d

'April 16—Suni Williams competed in the Boston Marathon on our treadmill. Although she did not win, she said that she enjoyed the “fresh air” and “being outside.” NASA is very pleased with us for finally doing something that people on Earth aren’t horrified by.

April 19—Today, Suni used the StairMaster to begin climbing Mt. Everest. She predicts that it will take several months to complete her ascent, but she is refusing food and water. Our colleague Oleg Kotov tried to explain that mountain climbers on Earth do not deprive themselves of sustenance, but she insisted that she would “hunt for food, like a human.”

May 17—Suni reached the top of Mt. Everest this morning, far ahead of schedule. She said that she wanted to experience the summit without oxygen, but Oleg would not open the door to the shuttle. Suni begins her descent tonight.

May 18—A thought: it is weird to see someone sleep in a tent on a StairMaster.

May 20—Today, Suni had us pitch baseballs to her while she used the elliptical machine. She said that she had just gone four-for-four and pitched a perfect game for the New York Mets.

May 22—I didn’t even know this, but I guess yesterday Suni entered, campaigned for, and lost a state-senate race in Connecticut.

May 23—Today, Suni decided to moonwalk across the Grand Canyon on the treadmill. I told her that a treadmill does not simulate walking on air and she asked me if I was going to stand in the way of her being the first person to moonwalk across the Grand Canyon. Then she didn’t even walk backward, because she said that “treadmills are always going in reverse, if you think about it.”

May 24—Suni came to my berth last night and told me she wanted to lie in the strong arms of her husband on Earth. I declined, and a few minutes later I heard the Nautilus machine gently whirring in the darkness.

May 25—Today, Suni watched “The Wizard of Oz” and listened to “Dark Side of the Moon” while using the NordicTrack.

May 26—This afternoon, Suni rapped the national anthem while chugging Red Bull and running in place. We thought it was a joke, but then she asked us for her “official time.”

May 27—Suni was up until 5 A.M. writing a paper on “The Catcher in the Rye” for a ninth-grade English class she is attending on her stationary bike. “I have perfect attendance,” she claims.

May 28—I don’t know how this came about, but today Suni made me and Oleg run the Boston Marathon on the treadmill while she officiated. She says that this makes her the first woman to “compete in and officiate at the Boston Marathon.” Oleg said he was going to check on this fact, but then she added “in space,” and we had to admit that she was probably right.'