Friend: “Flowers are basically a place where insects go to masturbate.”
Typical Thursday night.
About the Author
Jen McCreight (it rhymes with "write") is a geeky, nerdy, atheist feminist who managed to escape Indiana for Seattle.
Email: jen (at) thejenome (dot) com
27 comments
jeremyyoder says:
Dec 15, 2011
I beg to differ. If anyone’s getting masturbated in a pollination interaction, it’s the flower.
/pedantry
shouldbeworking says:
Dec 15, 2011
That’s it, I am never buying flowers again. All that nasty sex stuff. I’m gonna stick with teaching nice simple, not perverted physics.
Retired Prodigy Bill says:
Dec 15, 2011
Wasn’t there a bit in a Dawkins work where he was talking about people saying insects couldn’t get turned on by flower displays, an argument he then destroyed by talking about humans getting turned on by pigment on wood pulp?
paul says:
Dec 15, 2011
I knew one blogger who, when the trees in her neighborhood went all out with the pollen, wrote “The trees are having sex in our noses again.”
Jafafa Hots says:
Dec 15, 2011
Please don’t post this friend’s explanation of honey. :(
Jafafa Hots says:
Dec 15, 2011
“The trees are having sex in our noses again.”
On the northeast side of Lake Merritt in Oakland are (or were in 1997 anyway) a bunch of trees along the path that during a certain time of year absolutely reek of semen.
Burns your sinuses and nostrils. Totally feels like the trees are having sex in your nose.
F says:
Dec 16, 2011
A snootfull of sperm.
DHB says:
Dec 16, 2011
This reminds me of a very early Saturday Night Live skit with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. They were all dressed like bees and the scene was in a summer camp cabin complete with steel bunk beds.
The lights are turned off and then we hear “squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.” The lights come back on and one of the bees says, “Allan’s buzzing awww-awwwwfffff! Allan’s buzzing awww-awwwwfffff!”
Allan replies, “I was not!”
Another says, “Oh yeah, well then why do you have honey all over yourself?”
Later they are told by their camp counselor, “It’s okay to play with your stingers.”
Lou Jost says:
Dec 16, 2011
There are many orchids (Lepanthes, Telipogon, Ophrys, others) that imitate the rear ends of female bugs (sometimes in great detail), and the males sometimes really do have fake sex with them. In Lepanthes, the males actually ejaculate. So masturbation is quite literally correct for these.
holytape says:
Dec 16, 2011
No, most insects don;t masturbate in flowers. No they are to eat the pollen and nectar, which is more like giving head and going down on a flower than anything else. Expect for some cool orchids, previously mentioned.
Fear and Loathing in Damascus
The Phytophactor says:
Dec 16, 2011
So many misconceptions, so little time, so very very little knowledge of botany. And you actually have to know something to be clever or funny about it. In only one type of pollination is anything close to masturbation involved; pseudocopulation where flowers mimic female insects to attract males. Science is such a wet blanket.
Vene says:
Dec 16, 2011
I thought the perverted sex stuff was the selling point of biology.
Svlad Cjelli says:
Dec 16, 2011
…Yes, a few specific kinds of flowers. That brush is a bit too wide for comfort.
Azkyroth says:
Dec 16, 2011
Don’t you think it shows the benevolence and wisdom of the creator that flowers just happen to produce aids for the self-pleasuring of insects? ;P
npyundt says:
Dec 16, 2011
From my limited understanding, flowers are the plant equivalent of the creepy loner putting peanut butter on their genitals to get their pet to lick it off. Trees are like bukake getting it everywhere. To be fair, how do you think you would handle having your feet glued to one spot for your whole life?
aurophobia says:
Dec 16, 2011
jeremyyoder is quite right. Insects are semi-consenting partners in one of the weirdest three-ways in nature.
carpenterman says:
Dec 16, 2011
We should probably stop going on about insect and tree sex before Perry, Bachman, and Santorum start demanding that insects and trees not be allowed to get married or join the military.
Jen says:
Dec 16, 2011
This is exactly what was being referenced.
Sili says:
Dec 16, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHze0SqB5Zg
M31 says:
Dec 16, 2011
It made me think of this comic (warning, kind of NSFW):
http://oglaf.com/stamen/
oglaf.com is the funniest, naughtiest webcomic of all. Highly recommended, if you like fantasy, sci-fi, and porn all mixed together.
Jacques says:
Dec 16, 2011
All I know is I’m glad plants can’t do to our sex organs what we do to theirs! Just thinking about what would pass as the centerpiece of a plant table-setting gives me the creeps.
Azkyroth says:
Dec 17, 2011
Just relax and work up to it :P
F says:
Dec 17, 2011
Wow. Gore Vidal gone wild.
Lou Jost says:
Dec 17, 2011
Ouch!!!
athorist says:
Dec 17, 2011
by ‘perverted physics’, I assume you mean chemistry
Arctic Ape says:
Dec 18, 2011
This thread is very effective in luring obsessive pedants like me:)
I just got seriously into wondering if you can differentiate between partnered sex and masturbation in an orchid bee, which supposedly has quite simple sexual psychology. Then again, objectively it is masturbation, even if the insect doesn’t recognise the difference between the flower and a female bee.
Bleh, whatever.
Svlad Cjelli says:
Dec 19, 2011
Σ(゜д゜;) Apparently that brush is perfect for Comfort!