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BREAKING: Freedom 250 concert will now be a klan rally!


 

and nobody fucken cares


 


 

Flatworms Are Hermaphrodites. When Two Meet to Mate, They Fence With Their Male Organs — Each Trying to Inseminate the Other — Because Being the Female Is Costly. The Winner Gets to Be the Male. The Loser Gets Pregnant. Both individuals want to be the male. Only one gets to be. They fight for the right. Pseudobiceros hancockanus and related polyclad flatworm species — colourful marine flatworms found in tropical reef systems — are simultaneous hermaphrodites: each individual carries both male and female reproductive organs. When two individuals meet for mating, a bizarre competition begins: penis fencing. Each flatworm extends its male reproductive organ — a two-headed, stylet-tipped structure — and attempts to pierce the skin of the other and inject sperm, while simultaneously manoeuvring to avoid being pierced itself. The contest: typically lasts 10–60 minutes. The loser is the individual that receives the sperm injection. The sperm is injected hypodermically — directly through the skin, not through a dedicated opening — and must then migrate through the flatworm's tissue to reach the eggs. Why both individuals want to be the male: the energetic cost of being female is substantially higher. Carrying and developing eggs requires significant metabolic investment. Being the male costs almost nothing beyond the mating event itself. The winner: gets to fertilise the other and bear no energetic reproductive cost. The loser: must produce and carry eggs. The "fencing" is not metaphorical — it is a genuine combat in which manoeuvring skill, stamina, and the ability to direct and deflect the stylet determines the reproductive outcome. When a reproductive system creates a competitive conflict between two partners of the same species — in which both fight to achieve the same role — does that make the flatworm's mating system the most honest expression of the sexual conflict theory in biology?