Margaret and I like to watch some of the same things on TV. I will definitely stop writing my alien romances to watch "The Most Extreme" or "Fooled By Nature" on Animal Planet.
It's not that I'm particularly twisted (or so I fondly imagine), but I am interested in watching male animals getting their heads chewed while they do their reproductive duty. I understand that male praying mantises have a second heart --or is it a second brain?-- down there, which is what enables them to pump more vigorously once the head is gone.
I wonder whether they fornicate faster because the blood flow is diverted to the second brain or second heart once the big head no longer needs a supply. I like to know the ins and outs, and the hows and whys! Like, dying trees often produce a vast and vigorous quantity of flowers and seeds.
I've heard that Brachiosaurs (long necked dinosaur types) may have had an extra heart to pump blood along that long neck. Do giraffes? Or do giraffes just have a really efficient sequence of valves... like canal locks?
When I watch elephants and other large quadrupeds with extremely stiff spines and highly mobile (and apparently well-controlled) reproductive equipment go about the business of procreation, I cannot help thinking of some of the building supply equipment I see on the road... the sort that has a driver in the cab at the front end, but a little cab with a crane and control center at the back end to do the delicate work of lifting and maneuvering.
Have you ever watched an elephantine erection in action? Remarkable!
In National Geographic for Kids, there's a delightful article about animals being nice to one another. In one story, a forest elephant gets the sensitive tip of its trunk damaged in a hunter's trap. So, it leaves the forest and goes out onto the savannah (usually forest elephants stay in the forest, and savannah elephants stay on the savannah, and as a result of not socializing their ears have evolved to look different... apparently). The forest elephant walks up to a surprised savannah elephant and pushes the tip of its hurt trunk into the savannah elephant's mouth.
At once, the savannah elephant tastes the blood, understands his fellow's plight (they must both be young male elephants, I assume, or they would not be alone) and uses his own trunk to pull up a small tree and thrust it into his new friend's mouth.
Aaaahhhh!
There's not a lot of use for me in thinking further about sensitive, prehensile trunk tips and other applications because I write romance with alien elements.
My aliens do have secondary brains and hearts... one has to have a rationale why priapism isn't a problem during the
rut rage, for the few readers who wonder about such things. One of these days I really must ask my friend Jade Lee (the author) how practitioners of 17-hour Tantric sex don't damage themselves. In my next book, I also touch on the problems of having more brain than humans.
By the way... if anyone clicked the "watch elephants" link in this blog, and is now furious with me for sending them to the INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL book trailer (which is also on my newly rationalized website), try looking to the right in the sidebar of what YouTube catalogues as similar subject matter.
On an administrative note, Cindy Holby aka Colby Hodge is on assignment. I shall blog on her Saturdays until September... apart from August 4th, when Marjorie M Liu will blog.
Barbara Karmazin will be guest blogging on Sundays, and will delight us with at least one lecture about alien sex. We can look forward to a hot summer! The hero in Barbara's The Huntress is extraordinarily well endowed. He has two!!
best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
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