Now I understand the job ad stating “Marsupial seeks bi-lingual secretary”. 
Well, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that. A few years ago there was a Discovery Channel program on whales that included footage of mating grey whales, and a discussion of their “dorks.” And the term was indeed introduced and defined by the narrator.
My wife calls me a dork all the time.
I don’t think this is true, but the Iguana is perhaps the only reptile that masturbates.
If there are awards for the fanciest penis, the damselfly wins. The typical arrangement is to have an inflatable bulb and two horns at the tip, with bristles down the side. If you happen to be Calopteryx Maculata, you can use it to scoop out the last guy’s deposit before making your own.
The penis of the adult African Elephant can turn green during mating season
If you want a long list of bizzare penises (and let’s face it, who doesn’t) just go here.
Well, big enough for a baby whale to come out of…
…yeh, but duz it echo?
ducks…and runs…
I have been a fond possessor and spouter of this information for years. Sure fire cocktail party fact and bang-on clear demo of evolution science.
This isn’t recent, but I just found it. So the little bastards have legs, which I’m not sure qualify as for feeding or for their status as sessile, and it was recognized previously that, like they say, big feet, big penis, which I just learned is a linked/coupled trait; unsurprisingly, I never knew that plasticity (growth pattern or rate) is a follow-on epigenetic question–and I am hoping Colibri comes to the rescue here
The big deal–is it?–here is that the linkage is is still shown in the plasticity in two different “directions” depending on environment.
Help me out here: I read it as less crowded, longer penis, shorter legs, which is what I would have guessed. And when the waves are strong (relative to some crowdedness limit, I suppose), longer legs, shorter penis. Perhaps it’s not the absolute strength of the waves, but a strength/time of exposure thing; I read it too quickly…
Full text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.21395/full
I have been a fond possessor and spouter of this information for years. Sure fire cocktail party fact and bang-on clear demo of evolution science.
This isn’t recent, but I just found it. So the little bastards have legs, which I’m not sure qualify as for feeding or for their status as sessile, and it was recognized previously that, like the way, big feet, big penis, which I just learned is a linked/coupled trait; unsurprisingly, I never knew that plasticity (growth pattern or rate) is a follow-on epigenetic question with linked traits–and I am hoping Colibri comes to the rescue here
The big deal–is it?–here is that the linkage is is still shown in the plasticity in two different “directions” depending on environment.
Help me out here: I read it as less crowded, longer penis, shorter legs, which is what I would have guessed. And when the waves are strong (relative to so crowdedness limit, I suppose), longer legs, shorter penis; or perhaps it’s exposure time to waves of some force, not absolute force.
Full text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.21395/full
Let’s just say, you don’t want to drop your car keys in there.
Classic thread with same topic - great writing (Best of Dope class).
How big are a blue whale’s schlong and nuts?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=454289&highlight=kentuckian
I thought the jellyfish had the longest penus at something like 100 or more feet long but I can’t locate the site now. Just a thread that would drift out into the current and hopefully find another jellyfish.
Jellyfish don’t have internal fertilization at all, so you must be thinking of something else.
One species is known to transfer packets of sperm using its tentacles but it’s small. And that wouldn’t qualify as a penis.
Big enough to deliver a baby whale.
Re: “dork”, I believe this term never had anything to do with specifically whale penises, but was originally a slang term for penis, originating as a variant of the word “dick” (quite recently; around the '50s or '60s); it then rounded off to the innocuous insult we know it as now. At least, that’s what various etymological references tell me. I have no idea where the whale part originated in popular consciousness.
That’s a straightforward jump. Someone somewhere said something about a whale’s dork. Someone else asked him what he meant, and he said “it’s his penis, idiot”. The someone else then assumed that it meant specifically a whale’s penis, not just a penis in general, and it propagated from there.
Huh. I didn’t even think birds HAD penises. You learn something new every day.
Ducks (and some other species) are unusual in that regard. Most birds don’t have an intromittent structure - when they mate, they just press their cloacal openings together.
Right. Ducks and other waterfowl, large flightless birds (ostriches and such), and one kind of weaver-finch, are pretty much the only birds to have a penis. (Ironically, a cock doesn’t have a cock.)
Right, but what was the particular source within this propagation that caused it to be popularized so very widely?
Cocks have testicles, however, which are called for in a number of 19th century garnishes.
One of my butchers said he can have them for me when I asked a while ago; my interest in the recipes languished since then, but it is on my list.
I guess this is where you get a link to a photo of the elegant bar aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht Christa O. The bar is fitted out in whale teeth, lots of white rope, and the barstools, well…
To see the pic of the bar (absolutely SFW) you’ll have to scroll about 4/5 of the way down.