Carl Zimmer over at Phenomena posted another great post about the tongue-eating parasite! Don't worry, it's not coming for YOUR tongue, it prefers fish. The parasites get in the fish's mouth, one turns female (they start out all male) and eats the fish's tongue, and then takes its place! She hang outs there while the surrounding males also hang around in the fish's mouth, and mate with her. So not only does this poor fish have his tongue replaced by a parasite, he's got a freakin' orgy going on in his MOUTH that he can't do anything about.

So, pretty embarrassing for the fish.

But if you think that's a humiliating parasite, wait til you see this one! It not only takes over your body, it'll castrate you and shrink your penis in the bargain.

Good thing it only likes whelks.

Tetreault et al. "Impact of a Castrating Trematode, Neophasis sp., on the Common Whelk, Buccinum undatum, in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence" Biological Bulletin, 2000

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Today's Friday Weird Science was inspired by @TruffledSquirrel, Who sent me the following tweet.

@scicurious you love science & coffee; any idea how much caffeine you can actually absorb through your skin? thisiswhyimbroke.com/caffeinated-so…

— Joanna Martin (@trufflesquirrel) February 21, 2013

The link listed is to this product:

This is Shower Shock, caffeinated soap. And in fact, I have personal experience with it! Someone gave it to me as a gift, figuring that anything caffeine-themed would go over well. They were correct, but unfortunately, I have extremely sensitive skin and couldn't use the soap.

But I, like @trufflesquirrel, have always wondered if it worked. I have to admit I basically assumed that it was a gimmick. I mean, caffeine absorption through the skin? The claims are as follows:

Shower Shock is an all vegetable based glycerine soap which does *not* contain any harsh ingredients like ethanol, diethanolamine, polyethylene glycol or cocyl isethionate. So it's a gently invigorating soap Scented with peppermint oil and infused with caffeine anhydrous, each bar of Shower shock contains approximately 12 servings/showers per 4 ounce bar with 200 milligrams of caffeine per serving. No, we're not kidding and no you don't eat it. Caffeine can be absorbed through the skin. For maximum effect, ThinkGeek recommends that you build up a good Shower Shock lather across your entire body before rinsing!

(Emphasis mice)

Well, can it? The question got me looking. And lo and behold, shower shock is not necessarily a far fetched idea!

Feldman and Maibach. "Absorption of some organic compounds through the skin in man" The Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 1970.

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Today's Friday Weird Science is inspired by Kate Clancy, or rather, Kate Clancy's offspring. Said offspring had the recent misfortune to receive a gift in her shoe. A rather smelly gift. Yup, one of her preschool friends pooped in her shoe.

So, just found out that one of the kids at preschool pooped in my daughter's slippers. For reals.

— Kate Clancy (@KateClancy) February 13, 2013

Nothing like a poop in your shoe to show eternal friendship I guess. Luckily Kate's offspring took it in good part. I figure, that's something so odd you kind of HAVE to laugh it off.

But the story, and other such stories, got me thinking. Poop. We don't talk about it much. Well, ok, some of us do, but usually in terms of things of whether or not we're constipated or have diarrhea, depending on our stress levels and whether a norovirus is going around. But in a normal healthy human...how often do we poop? And...how big is it? I mean, someone must have investigated this question, I have to assume that modern toilets have the latest in ergonomic poop volume disposal design. But who has?

Well, I found one group. And they not only took heroic measures to gather, dry, and weigh poop, they also looked at both high and low fiber diets! We all know that high fiber diets are supposed to...well make things move along, shall we say. But the effect on volume! Oh my.

Kelsay et al. "Effect of fiber from fruits and vegetables on metabolic responses of human subjects: fiber intakes, fecal excretions, and apparent digestibilities." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1981.

(mmmm, Fiber).

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It is more than coincidence. It is FATE that brought us today's Friday Weird Science. First, Mr. S alerted me to the reviews for this hair removal product. Warning: do not read the reviews unless you have the space and time to laugh til you cry. As a brief excerpt:

I didn't have long to wait. At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head. Religion hadn't featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the destruction of the meat and two veg.

It gets better. Read them all. There's even one in verse!

So my mind was already on the subject of grooming in the nether regions when I received a tweet from Bug_Girl:

Droppin' the science. And, occasionally, the soap.goldjournal.net/article/S0090-… Friday material, @scicurious? #pubicgroominginjuries

— Bug G. Membracid (@bug_girl) January 6, 2013

The tweet linked to the following study, and today's weird science was born.

Because let's be honest: we've all thought about the hair down there. Is there too much? Too little? How much is enough? How much should you even care? Even if you decided you don't care at all, you still put in the time to contemplate the grooming of your nether regions. And if you HAVE groomed below, there's probably been more than one...close shave. After all, it's tough to see and there are shapes and folds and I don't know what all.

And so it may not surprise you much to know that some people do indeed take it a bit too far. So far, in fact, they end up in the ER.

Glass et al. "Pubic Hair Grooming Injuries Presenting
to U.S. Emergency Departments" Urology, 2012.

(There is no safe for work image I can use here. Instead, I present this partially shaved poodle. As a metaphor. Source)

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a hermaphroditic flatworm in possession of its own sperm, rarely runs short of sperm, and thus must be in want of another hermaphrodite of suitable quality to inseminate."
-Jane Austen, if she had studied flatworms

What are the economics of donating sperm? In many species where you have two sexes, male and female, the principle is pretty simple: donate sperm ALL THE TIME. Or at least as much as possible. Females tend to be more choosy about mating opportunities (due to higher eventual cost to themselves), and thus it behooves a male to get his sperm in whenever a female so much as crosses his path.

But what if both the parties involved are hermaphrodites? Well then you face something a bit different.

Vreys and Michiels. "Sperm trading by volume in a hermaphroditic flatworm with mutual penis intromission" Animal Behavior, 1998.

(Source)

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WARNING: Some of the pictures you are about to see are NSFW. And kind of gross. So you know.

Echidnas, aka Spiny Ant Eaters, are among the species that, until now, I usually forgot existed. When it comes to monotremes, the platypus is the most charismatic (or at least, definitely the oddest looking) of the bunch. And echidnas, well, they just look like...kind of a cross between a hedgehog and an anteater. Kind of cute, but not really memorable.

But now. NOW I will never forget the echidna again. And neither will you. Because this little guy has a FOUR-HEADED PENIS. This penis has so many heads, in fact, that the echidna can play it cool...he only has to use two at a time.

Johnston et al "One-Sided Ejaculation of Echidna Sperm Bundles" The American Naturalist, 2007.

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If you're the kind of nerd like me, then you're the kind of nerd that really liked spending time in libraries and old bookrooms as a kid. To this day I love having books around me, especially the old kind with nice leather covers. And of course, if you're spent time around old books, you know that old book smell. It's kind of musty, but evokes happy memories of wood and leather and soft lamp glows, and maybe a nice fireplace (if you're very lucky) by which to sit and dig through intellectual treasures.

And what with all the memories, you start to really love that old book smell. But do you love it so much you could wear it? Pascale at Whizbang alerted me to the fact that there is a "Paper Passion" perfume!

Couldn't make this stuff up. Pascale notes that it might be good to spritz on your e-reader for the authentic paper experience. I do love me some dead tree smell but not quite enough to wear it.

But it made me wonder: does the perfume really smell like old books, and what makes that old book smell? Luckily, Marc Abrahams came to the rescue with a paper that's perfect! And so I present today's Friday Weird Science:

Strlic et al. "Material Degradomics: On the Smell of Old Books" Annals of Chemistry, 2009*

(That's right. Breathe it in. Source)

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