“Oh look, they’ve got little suckerfish on their tummies!”
No, friends.
those are their genitals
This is one of my favorite things to point out to people especially because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) really loves to draw detailed claspers on every shark on their visual images, such as this diversity poster.
Claspers are sort of odd genitals, too, because they fill sort of a similar function to penises but aren’t the same structure – and they’ve got sharp attachment points for holding on. Here’s a great explanation of how they work from elasmo-research.org:
“After communicating its amorous intentions to a sexually receptive female shark through ritualized swimming and gentle ‘love nips’ along her back or flanks, the male grasps one of her pectoral fins (the wing-like fins located behind the gill slits) in his mouth and arches his body so that his pelvic fins are brought close to hers. If the amorous male happened to ‘dock’ along the left side of the female, he flexes his right clasper across the mid-line of his body and inserts it into her vent (genital opening). To secure the inserted clasper in place, its tip unfolds in complex, species specific ways — often anchoring by way of one or more spike-like clasper spurs (ouch!)”
It’s very common for people to get worried about pet rats and tumors as well – for a good reason, since they are very prone to tumors. Often what they’re reacting to is just giant rat balls though! Sometimes people get worried a rat is sitting on a hairless pink baby rat, which is even funnier when you know what’s actually going on.
Male rats have balls that are massive in relation to their bodies, you really can’t miss them. Producing a lot of offspring is very important for wild rats, since they rarely make it to 2 years old due to diseases and predators. Rather than living long and being healthy, they trust in large populations and producing big litters of babies, often. For that, male rats need big balls.
Because of the ridiculous sizeof rat balls, most movie makers and tv people consider them a little too rude, and only use female rats in films and on tv. There’s a good chance every single rat you’ve seen on film was a girl! Figuring out the sex of rats in tv and movies is one of my secret hobbies, and it’s super easy. If the rats don’t look like they’ve got big pink figs under their tails, you’re looking at a bunch of cute rat actresses.
@sixpenceee So, last week in my dorm, a rat was spotted in one of the toilets (while someone was using it). As you can imagine this got me pretty freaked out and while I was googling to see how likely the chances are of it happening again, I stumbled upon this video by national geographic. It’s pretty fascinating, but unfortunately it didn’t really give me any peace of mind
Oh my
thank you now i can’t sleep or go to the bathroom…
Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.
Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:
The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.
Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.
When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.
Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.
What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?
Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?
The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?
Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.
Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?
It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.
But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.
It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.
An adorable rat not spreading the plague and hugging a tiny teddy bear. Much empathy.
PiraticOctopus 