
Why do human testicles hang like that? - nreece
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=why-do-human-testicles-hang-like-th-2009-11-19
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kurtosis
This article never answered a very basic question: so evolution exiled man's
balls from the body because sperm are temperature sensitive - but why didn't
sperm just evolve to be less vulnerable to high temperatures? Anyone have a
clue on this one?

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SlowOnTheUptake
If the sperm are to be activated by the higher temperature inside the female
body then they would have to be cooler initially. They evolved to be triggered
into action by the normal internal body temperature.

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mdemare
But why use temperature to trigger them into action? Why not mix them with
some kind of hormone for activation?

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evgen
Zck's answer points out the fallacy of the "why" question, but in gneneral I
would surmise that co-evolution of sex-linked traits like this are a harder
hill to climb than simple evolutionary adaption of the sperm alone. Developing
a "program" that is not much more than "when you hit body-temp it is 'go
time'" is less susceptible to external forces or attempts at subversion by
either other sperm or the female reproductive tract.

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philwelch
I always figured they were different heights to protect them from getting
squeezed together by our thighs.

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patrickgzill
It is believed that early Pacific Islanders were able to navigate long
distances by reading the changes in the long swell as they sailed the Pacific;
for instance, an island will have a "reflection" in the swell.

Longer but rambling explanation:
<http://www.passengerplanet.com/softwarm.html>

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lionhearted
I love Scientific American.

> Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Dr. Bering, how do you account for
> the fact that testicles are rarely perfectly symmetrical in their
> positioning within the same scrotum?” In fact, the temperature regulating
> function governed by the cremasteric muscle can account even for the most
> lopsided, one-testicle-above-the-other, waffling asymmetries in testes
> positioning.

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imajes
sciam blogs tend to be a little less than awesome... one of the problems i
have with this piece:

" If it were true, we would expect to see scrotal testicles becoming
increasingly elaborate and dangly over the course of evolution, not to mention
women should display a preference for males toting around the most
ostentatious scrotal baggage. “With the possible exception of colored male
scrota among a few species of primates,” write Gallup and his colleagues,
'there is little evidence that this has been the case.' "

Clearly this refers to us chaps having scrota that we could either puff up
like a balloon or flatten out to wave around like a fan, or even change color
(like so many of the mating displays of the wild). However, the author fails
to recall the time of Shakespeare (and, in some cultures, still today), in
which men would wear a codpiece to promote their wares:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codpiece>

(interestingly, Codpiece is from the middle english 'cod' which means,
scrotum)

I bring this up not to be pedantic, but because it's important to say what we
mean. In this instance, the author's language suggests he isn't aware of the
codpiece and, well, for scientific american - this feels like poor journalism.
Better to say what you actually meant, if writing for the sake of oratory
confuses the intent.

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idleworx
I refuse to participate in this discussion

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BerislavLopac
I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that our ancestors lived
in water at some point. :)

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DanielBMarkham
_With a keen enough eye, presumably one could master the art of 'reading'
testicle alignment, using the scrotum as a makeshift room thermometer . But
that's just me speculating._

Not the kind of skill you'd want to brag about -- assuming you are a
heterosexual male, that is.

~~~
Mz
I beat you to essentially the same thought by about one minute.

~~~
Mz
I thought it was a funny coincidence. Someone want to explain why that's an
offensive observation? Does it need a smiley face or something? (Serious
question)

~~~
gloob
I'm not really certain, since I didn't vote you down, but I suspect that
whoever did didn't find is offensive so much as they found it unfunny.

~~~
Mz
It's all good. I was just wondering what the issue is since I assumed my
initial joke would be the problem rather than this remark. A woman cracking
jokes about male genitals in a 98% male forum has to be skating on some
extremely thin ice. :-D Which is part of why I found it funny to see someone
else make an extremely similar remark to mine. Presumably, they are male (at
least the odds are good, given the forum). Since they got upvoted and I got
downvoted, obviously there is some subtly that's lost on me.

Thank you.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Beats me why we got down-modded.

It was an odd quote, and didn't fit in with the rest of the article (which I
thought was very good, btw) Plus it set off all sorts of sophomoric jokes at
least in my mind.

It didn't fit. It was appropriate to point it out -- even in a slightly
humorous fashion. A smiley might have helped, but who knows? Like you said,
it's all good.

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Mz
To sum it up: Air Con-ditioning. (But you knew that.)

In other news:

"With a keen enough eye, presumably one could master the art of “ reading”
testicle alignment, using the scrotum as a makeshift room thermometer . But
that's just me speculating."

This might be a neat party trick at a nudist camp, but I imagine it would tend
to scream "fag" if you are male or "tramp" if you are female. As a WAG: Not
likely to catch on.

