And now, for something completely different.

This is just funny.  Well, if you have my sense of humor, I guess it is.  You know how Google mail has those little links across the top of your Inbox while you’re trying to read or get rid of the Spam?  I saw this headline – “Bug’s Penis Makes Loudest Animal Sound” – and, well, I just had to click on the article.  As Mr. Spock would say (with one eyebrow raised): “Fascinating.”

The water boatman is “smaller than a drawing pin, but it’s also the loudest animal on the planet…relative to its body size[.]”  The male Micronecta scholtzi can create mating calls of up to 99.2 decibels.  For some comparison, the article notes, this “is the equivalent of sitting in the front row of a loud, full-blown orchestra, or standing 15 meters away from a hurtling freight train.”  Okay, that would be cool enough, but probably wouldn’t even merit it to be an answer/question on Jeopardy!  Except for this last part:

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

“To make this colossal acoustic din, the male water boatman rubs his penis (or “genitalia appendage”) against the ridged surface of his abdomen, like a wooden spoon against a washboard.  Size doesn’t matter for this tiny marine animal, though, as the whole area measures about 50 micrometers across — roughly the width of a human hair.”

Now, an elephant’s trumpet blast can get as loud as 117 decibels, but it’s trunk isn’t the size of a human hair (obviously).  And neither is its, uhhh… other trunk.  But the one essential question scientists haven’t answered that immediately popped into my head was: “Does having the loudest mating call on the planet mean that the male lesser water boatman is also the horniest creature on the planet?”

That would be… illogical.

The full article can be found by clicking here on Wired.com’s UK site.