The honey bee has exploding testicles...yes, really!
The reproductive cycle of bees is fascinating - and complex. But here’s the short story: a queen is selectively bred in a special "queen cell" in the hive and fed royal jelly by worker bees to induce her to become sexually mature.
A virgin queen that survives to adulthood without being killed by her rivals will take a mating flight with a dozen or so male drones (out of tens of thousands eligible bachelors in the colony). But don’t call these drones lucky because during mating, their genitals explode and snap off *OUCH*
inside the queen!Strange as it is, this actually makes evolutionary sense: the snapped-off penis acts as a genital plug to prevent other drones from fertilizing the queen. But tell that to the dead drone whose penis just exploded.
No comments:
Post a Comment