I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between Art and Science: this is how I became a Pierre-Joseph Redouté and John James Audubon fan. Recently I came to realize that there is also a relationship between Porno and Science, and Apophallation is a good example:
“Apophallation is a technique resorted to by some species of air-breathing land slugs such as Limax maximus and Ariolimax spp. In these species of hermaphroditic terrestrial gastropod mollusks, after mating, if the slugs cannot successfully separate, a deliberate amputating of the penis takes place.” (from Wikipedia, read the full entry)
When I discovered the word Apophallation I made a little search, and came up with this result. The page, made by Brooke L W Miller in 2004, is called “Home of the Slug Love” and it’s hosted on the UCSC .edu website: “I am studying evolutionary biology and I became interested in Banana Slugs because I feel that they are good organisms to study sexual conflict between hermaphroditic mating partners.” What follows can only be described as Slug Porno – see it for yourself: there are even videos, aptly rated XXX.
There is also a (mispelled) Newsgroup for this, alt.binaries.apophalation, that yesterday had 290 files posted. Mostly .rar files – parts of some movie which I didn’t download (you’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and apophallation seems a bit beyond). But of course, if you’ve been here before, you’ve already seen some Slug love.