Tag • #reproduction

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Gay, lesbian and intersex whales: our queer sea has much to teach us

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 1 March - 12:50

The first documented sex between two male humpback whales is just the latest challenge to our presumptions about sexuality

Whales are extraordinarily sensuous creatures. Those blubbery bodies are highly sensitive, and sensitised. At social meetings, pods of sperm, humpback and right whales will roll around one another’s bodies for hours at a time. I’ve seen a group of right whales engaged in foreplay and penetration lasting an entire morning.

I have also watched a male-female couple so blissfully conjoined that they appeared unbothered by our little fishing boat as they passed underneath it. And in what may sound like a career of cetacean voyeurism, I have also been caught up in a fast-moving superpod of dusky dolphins continually penetrating each other at speed, regardless of the gender of their partner.

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Trump voices ‘strong support’ for IVF treatments after Alabama ruling

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 23 February - 22:05

Republicans struggle to find a unified response to the state’s ruling that threw into question the legal status of human embryos

Donald Trump has voiced “strong support” for IVF treatments, days after a ruling by the Alabama supreme court threw into question the legal status of human embryos and several providers in the state cut off access to the procedure.

The former US president said that under his leadership, the Republican party “will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families”.

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Gene variants that promote having more sex and kids diminish your life span

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 8 December - 16:55

A family portrait taken outside of a stone house, with several generations of individuals.

Enlarge / A large family can come with some unfortunate downsides (in addition to that weird cousin). (credit: Oliver Rossi )

Analysis of genomic and behavioral data from the vast UK Biobank finally demonstrates that genes that promote reproductive behaviors come with the ultimate price.

Aging stinks. You get marks on your skin, you’re slower, you forget stuff, and everything hurts. Your joints crack and pop. Evolution has achieved so many remarkable things; how is it possible that we still have to put up with growing old?

The antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis states that your body falls apart when you’re old to pay the cost of being reproductively fit when you’re young. If the same gene has different effects (called pleiotropy) at different times of life—if it enhances your chances of reproduction when you’re young but is deleterious somehow once you get older—that gene will still undergo positive selection and remain in the population because reproduction is that important.

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