My favorite example of the principle of analogy is this. Suppose you come into your house or apartment from a long day’s work. You just plop down on the chair, click on the TV with the remote — you don’t notice what channel it is — you weren’t the last one to use it. The first thing you see on the screen is a giant reptile looming above the Tokyo skyline — stomping the buildings into matchsticks. What’s your first reaction? “Oh, CNN!” No. You realize, “Okay, I got the SciFi channel” — or whatever they’re calling it now. It’s Godzilla. It’s The Lost World — something like that.

Well, you don’t know that! There you go with those presuppositions again — your anti-monster dogmatic worldview! It’s conceivable. I can imagine Gojira coming out of the water and all that. I don’t know how it would be, but I can’t rule it out. But I can’t take it too seriously either. Because I know of no experience by any reliable — Or unreliable! — witness. I do know of plenty of cheesy Toho Studio flicks in which this happens. So I have to assume this is another one. I could be wrong. It’s a probabilistic judgement. But what are the chances? And that’s all you’ve got.

—Robert M Price
Jesus is Dead

I’ve been scarred. Really. Read on. I promise that I will not scar you unless you want to be scarred. It has to do with bird sex, so first we must discuss the way most birds have sex before getting to the way that one bird in particular has sex.

All birds have this thing called a cloaca from which they expel both urine and feces. This is true of all amphibians and reptiles and even some mammals as well. I’ve never really understood why we humans (and the vast majority of other mammals) have separate systems, and I’m not going to look it up now. I have important bird business to discuss.

Okay, so all birds have these things. Most birds also use the cloaca for sex, “This means that the same opening that excretes feces and urine is where eggs are laid.” So in Chicken Run when the two rats, Nick and Fetcher, refer to eggs coming out of chickens “bums” they are exactly right. (This is, by the way, the best way to learn biology: from animated features.) In case you are wondering, this is not the scarring part of the story — not even close.

The way that most birds mate is kind of cool. When they are ready for sex, their cloacae puff up. So the male balances on the back of the female. She splits her back feathers to allow access to her cloaca. He maneuvers his body so that their cloacae can touch — this is called a “cloacal kiss.” It only lasts a second or so, but that’s enough time for the seamen to get transferred. This makes sense. Imagine if humans had to copulate standing up in a hammock and you get the idea.

It seems like such a charming way to have sex. There is something kind of brutal about the whole penis and vagina arrangement. On the other hand, having a single orifice where urine, feces, and babies come out strikes me as kind of disgusting. I’m already freaked out enough that the urine and baby place is the same. Obviously, baby birds have the advantage that they come out in neat little packages.

Okay, so that’s how most birds have sex — like those pretty gulls above. But as I said, not all. In particular, the mallards have penises and vaginas. And they generally have the kind of sex lives that most animals have. The male and the female link up, have some sex, have some babies, and the guy goes on his merry. But the males who do not manage to find a mate will go after lone females and beat them up and turn them into a kind of sex slave. Of course, dolphins do the same thing. But you need to remember that this is not what scarred me. Humans partake of sex slavery, and that oh so holy Bible that people like to talk about being the source of all morality is absolutely fine with it.

What is scarring is the mallard penis. Mallard penises can be over a foot long. That’s about as long as the duck is itself. And it is corkscrew shaped. You can read all about it along with information about duck and sea otter necrophilia in a Dylan Matthews article, Seven Adorable Animals That Are Also Murderous Monsters. But be aware that if you click over, you will be treated to a duck penis becoming erect in slow motion. And once seen, it cannot be unseen.

Many years ago, I spent a couple of months researching cats for a possible book. In many ways, cats are much less interesting than dogs. I don’t mean that in the typical way. I like both cats and dogs equally as species go. But humans have bred dogs to a remarkable degree. So we have ended up with a ridiculous number of dog breeds — ranging in size from the Chihuahua at 5 pounds to the St Bernard, which can reach up to 200 pounds. There is nothing like this in the cat world. In terms of base breeds, there are twice as many for dogs as for cats. But it is more simply that there isn’t that much variation between the breeds. And I have to say, I prefer it that way. I like both dogs and cats as mutts.

I had always thought that the reason for this lack of variety in cats was due to the fact that humans hadn’t really been breeding cats for very long. So I was surprised back in December to read a really interesting article by David Grimm, When Cats Became Comrades. According to genetic studies, humans first domesticated dogs about 15,000 years ago. We first domesticated cats somewhat more recently: 10,000 years ago. This number isn’t at all surprising: this is exactly when the Neolithic Revolution took place. Humans settled down, rodents came around, cats were useful with the rodent population.

There is a certain evolutionary pressure here. More aggressive cats would be chased away. Although interestingly, the domesticated cat is actually a bit bigger than its closest relative, the African wildcat. But over time, it isn’t hard to see how gentle and affectionate cats would get more scraps and so thrive in a way that others wouldn’t.

What’s remarkable is just how fast this happened. According to Grimm:

Strangely, this is about it for cat archaeology — at least for more than 4,000 years. A recent dig in China uncovered some cat bones from a millet farm that existed 5,300 years ago. As usual with these studies, the scientists were able to extract an amazing amount of information. They know, for example, that the cats were eating rodents and the rodents were eating grain. They even unearthed holes the rodents had dug into the grain stores. But they found even more:

The researchers also found a cat that was much older than is normal for wild cats. This is taken to mean that the cats had a close relationship with the farmers. But I’m not convinced that means quite as much as it could appear. The farmers could just have tolerated the cats — thereby providing a food source and protection without any active engagement from the humans. Then again, there could have been lots of petting going on. Regardless, it provides a much clearer picture of our long history with cats. And it is a lot longer than I had thought.