Shaving a Fly's Penis with a Laser

Male flies have penises covered with spines and hooks. To figure out what the purpose of those spines are, researchers Michal Polak and Arash Rashed removed the spines to see what would happen.
Their spines are too small to cut off by hand. So the duo used a laser instead, wielding the light with such surgical precision that they could cut off a third of each millimetre-long spine, or the entire structure.

They found that a partial shave did nothing, but the full treatment significantly reduced the odds of the males mating with females.

The conclusion is that the fly's penis hairs act as Velcro, to grasp the female long enough to inject sperm. Now you know. Link -via Treehugger

Previously at Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits.

Photo manipulated at Speechable.

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I don't know why "we" would deserve it, M&R. A very small group of people did this. It's not like humanity signed off on this project.

Also, they are flies. We kill hundreds of them every day without any compunction. They have no self awareness and they live for just a couple of days.
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