Turtle Vibrators & The Disappearing Condom

If you thought the  paper I shared yesterday was interesting I bet you will also love the two I am about to show you today. Initially, I planned to make separate posts for them since they are totally un-related but next week might be quite busy for me so what the heck, I''ll just throw both in the mix and save myself the trouble.

Let's begin:

Turtle Vibrators

If I gave you two turtles of the same species and asked you which one is female and which one is male would you know how to tell which is which? Well, unless you are a turtle specialist you probably answered no.

The problem with turtles is that they keep their genitals hidden inside their shell. For some sexual dimorphic species, it's easy for a specialist to distinguish the sex from various secondary sexual characteristics, like color and claw size. But not all species are dimorphic and even in the ones that are, there are often a couple individuals with characteristics of both sexes. In those cases, the only way to tell for sure  is when the male has an erection and the penis comes out.

Now, if researchers really want to know the sex of an ambiguous turtle, for whatever reason, there are a couple of methods they can use, like measuring testosterone levels , laparoscopy or I guess even cracking the shell open. 

There's got to be a simpler and more efficient method, right? I guess that's what a bunch of researchers from the  Missouri State University thought and embarked on a journey to find a solution to the problem... And they came up with this ingenious solution:

(credit, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Yep, turns out a cheap vibrator is all you need to determine the sex of a turtle! According to the authors of the paper, all you have to do is leave the vibrator a couple meters away from the turtle. Typically, males will show no interest whereas females will move closer and start using it! Yeah, I made this up but it would be funny if it worked that way. 

So, here's the proper method to use a vibrator to properly sex a turtle. All you have to do is turn it on and place it on the tail and shell. Soon, the vibrations will make the turtle horny, induce an erection (if it's a male) and the penis will come out:

 Once a male turtle was captured, we attempted to induce an erection by applying an 18 cm, variable-speed, silver bullet vibrator to its shell and tail. 

With a bit of practice, the researchers soon became masters of the turtle kama sutra:

 In general, turtles appeared to respond best when only the tip of the vibrator was touching them and when the vibrator had fresh batteries and was set on the fastest setting. Also, they seemed to respond best when the tip was held firmly against them (rather than allowing it to bounce), but not be pressed hard against them. Both allowing it to bounce and pressing it too hard generally resulted in turtles holding their limbs and tail tightly against the body, rather than relaxing. Additionally, it was often useful to move the vibrator around in small, slow, steady circles.  

God, it really blows my mind that these people were getting paid research funds to induce boners to turtles XD To be honest, I am jealous, they sure had lots of lulz during their research! 

So, after experimenting on 4 different species, the researchers concluded that vibrators are a relatively reliable tool for sexing some species, although not with 100 % precision. Interestingly, each species reacted differently to the vibrator, so the optimal technique differs from turtle to turtle.

Here's the link again to the paper, I promise, you will have plenty of fun reading it!

And now let's move to the second  paper of the day:

The Disappearing Condom

Our story begins sometime in the 2000s, with a 27-year-old female school-teacher from India who after 6 months of "persistent cough, sputum and fever" decided to visit the hospital. She had a thorough check up and all results came back normal, except for the chest radiographs that "showed development of a non-homogeneous right upper lobe lesion.". Now, I am not a doctor so I don't know what exactly this means, but  trust me, this is not the point of this post :D

The doctors first tried to treat the lesion with antibiotics and later with a four month trial of "an empirical anti-tuberculosis treatment (ATT) instituted by various practitioners.".. Again, no improvement, so they decided to do a video bronchoscopy and discovered pieces of a bag-like structure which by now I think you have already guessed what it was:

 The pieces were identified as being those of a ‘condom’. 

After being asked, the woman admitted to have performed fellatio on her husband with a condom and even remembered that at some point the condom had loosened  and she had  "an episode of sneezing or coughing. "! 

I just wish I was in front of this discussion and witness first hand the awkwardness and cringiness of the talk XD

Not surprisingly, the woman showed remarkable improvement in her symptoms after the removal of the condom although it took a couple of months for the lesion to clear...

The authors note in their paper that this is the first known case of an inhaled condom being reported in the published literature. What I find more interesting after doing some searching is that, at least to my knowledge, this is still the only reported case of an inhaled condom. Why? Well, in case you don't know snorting condoms is the new craze these days:

It's really impressive nobody has yet to die by chocking on a condom!

Here's a link again to the condom study. Again, a hilarious read :)

The Takeaway

Vibrators have plenty of uses and don't suck your guy with a condom. It's un-sexy and clearly very, very dangerous!

Hope you had some good laughs with this post, I know I did!

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