One-Testis Beetles
There is some payoff for reading all those boring-to-death scientific headlines; every now and again one gets an unexpected treat like this:
Researchers Find Three Major Beetle Groups Coming Up One Testicle Short
BERKELEY – A surprisingly large number of beetles are missing one of their testes, the male gonads of insects. As far as the researchers who discovered this can tell, the insects are not in any way bothered or impaired by this absence.
The discovery is striking because most animals are bilaterally symmetrical, which means the left and right sides of the body roughly mirror each other. […]
While animals such as jellyfish and starfish are radially symmetrical, bilateral symmetry is, hands down, the dominant body shape in the animal world, thanks in part to the drive for forward motion.
That's not to say there is no precedent for such deviations from bilateralism. One well-known example is the male fiddler crab, which has an outsized claw on one side that is used to attract female crabs and fend off male competitors.
Still, the researchers said the complete absence of an organ, or absence asymmetry, is rare. […]
At last, a use for the singular form "testis", which we thought only ever got used in the plural "testes".
I don't really want to make light of this research, nor argue with the researchers that, in their context, this discovery might be startling and unexpected and lead to other interesting discoveries.
However, I am a bit puzzled over their insistence that bilateralism is so prevalent that finding just one testes take one aback, scientifically. After all, what's the thing that's right there next to the the testes: the penis, right? How many creatures are there who have two penises?
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation