国家地理:Octopus Mating 章鱼交配（在线收听） |
| OK, we are back in the world of the Cyanea octopus. It's mating time. Here's your potential conquest. She doesn't know you're alive. She's too busy cleaning trash from her house. Now you are the perceptive type. You use your sensitive disks for any sign of interest—pheromones, whatever. Hey, wait a minute. She's standing tall, that means she sees you and she may be interested. Yeah, baby, full speed ahead. Then, wouldn't you know it, a vicious tide swirls in and suddenly everything is topsy-turvy. Among other flotsam, the tide brings in a rival. Now, great, just what you needed. Three's company, pal. Your job: get in the other guy's face. Just like what you do if you were an adult human male, you try to intimidate the other guy by striking poses and copping attitudes. Now, that doesn't work. So you show off your biggest sucker disks. You show him yours, he shows you his. It doesn't get any more testosterone serious than this. Yours is bigger, hum, naturally. And the intruder takes off like a whipped dog. Its tentacles would be between its legs, if its tentacles weren't already its legs. OK, now, where were we? Ah, right. As both you and the female are promiscuous—each of you mates with several other octopods from this part of the sea all the time—so, what's with all this coyness? Here's where it gets really really good. I mean, X-rated hot octopus-on-octopus good. Your goal is to get this appendage, called a hectocotylus arm, into the female's mantle cavity. Ah, there we go. The arm has a groove that delivers sperm packets to the female. The longer your arm stays in her cavity, near her oviduct, the more sperm packets you can deliver. If you are good, I mean, you have to be good, you might stay in this position for hours. At this time, ahem, forget about it. Not only does the coupling last just a minute or two, but when the female takes off, she drags you along, like the speaker at a drive-in movie, she forgot to put back on the rack. Luckily, an octopus is such a solitary creature. I mean, can you imagine hanging out with other guy octopi? You'd never hear the end of it. pheromone: 信息素，外激素 topsy-turvy: In a state of utter disorder or confusion 混乱 flotsam: Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk. 漂浮物 testosterone: 睾丸激素 coyness: 怕羞, 羞怯 hectocotylus: A modified arm of the male of certain cephalopods, such as the octopus, functioning as a reproductive organ in the transference of sperm to the mantle cavity of the female. 化茎腕，交接腕某些雄性头足纲动物，如章鱼身上的一条变种腕，可起生殖器官的作用，把精液传送到雌性的套膜腔中 mantle cavity: 外套腔 oviduct: A tube through which the ova pass from the ovary to the uterus or to the outside. 输卵管 |
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