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May 11, 2005
You Know What They Say About Fish With Big Fins...
I don't know how to even begin to report this story without getting myself into trouble or opening myself to a comment field day from the peanut gallery. So I'll just tell you that scientists have apparently determined that male mosquitofish with larger sex organs have much greater success rates in attracting female mosquitofish than males with average sized fish sexual appendages.
The study was done on mosquitofish, which are like guppies. They're only about an inch long. That's body length. For the appendage, we're talking millimeters. Nonetheless, biologist Brian Langerhans of Washington University in St. Louis managed to put a tape on 350 male mosquitofish. Langerhans took pictures of the gonopodia to measure their outlines."The organ is quite obvious, even on such small fish," he told LiveScience.
Wow. That must have been a hell of a morning in the Wash U biology lab, the day Brian Langerhans decided he wanted to measure fish dicks. And is it just me, or does Mr. Langerhans seem just a little too enthusiastic about his "quite obvious" observations?
Data in hand, Langerhans exposed about 50 females, one at a time, to video images of a male of average proportions at one end of an aquarium and an outsized male at the other end."They chose the larger one over and over," Langerhans said. "All females had the same preference."
I can see it now... on this week's Sex In The Aquarium, Sa-Manta tells Marlin-da, Char-lotte, and Carrie all about the mosquitofish she's dating with the huge gonopodia, followed by a discussion of red snapper.
