Science! There Is No God.

We offer to you, our readers, our newest column of oddities entitled, to be pronounced in a Dolby-esque manner, Science! We won't condescend by explaining its purpose.

We're aiming high with our first offering, as you likely gleaned from our balls-out title. We expect the less enlightened out there in Readerland to shudder at our brazenness and continue to cleave to their strung beads and crude wooden idols; but for those of you brave enough, read on. As evidence, we offer an excerpt from "Field Guide To The Slug." Prepare yourself.

"Although slugs are hermaphroditic, each animal equipped with both male and female reproductive organs, they mate with themselves only if no other slugs are around... The actual exchange of sperm is preceded by an elaborate courtship ritual...

During courtship, two slugs will circle each other ... with both partners engaged in ritualized bouts of lunging, nipping, and sideswiping with their tails. The two slugs may also display their disproportionately large sex organs. The great grey garden slug's penis is nearly half its total body length. In fact, penis size is reflected in the scientific name of one banana slug species: dolichophallus -- Latin for 'long penis.'"

Ha-ha, right? keep reading and see if you still think it's funny...

"'The sight of a courting pair of slugs majestically circling one another... while they solemnly wave their oversized penises overhead puts the most improbably athletic couples of Pompeii and Khajuraho into a more appropriate and severely diminished perspective,' note researchers C. David Rollo and William G. Wellington. 'Athletic' is an even more appropriate adjective for great grey garden slugs, which are able to copulate in midair, suspended by stretchy strands of mucus up to 17 3/4 inches long.

[F]or several more hours, their genital areas swell as the pair move even closer together. Penetration takes place, then each slug alternately releases and receives sperm."

See? You're getting creeped out, aren't you? It's downhill from here...

"Now the slugs must disengage -- a challenge for two animals so amply endowed and thoroughly covered in sticky mucus. After long bouts of writhing and pulling, the pair may resort to... apophallation. Translated, this means that one slug gnaws off the penis of the other. The apophallated slug cannot regrow his penis and is now obligated to be a female and forced to offer eggs."

In other words, a prison-style slug-punking. We'll give you a second to settle your throatful of bile. The worst is yet to come.

Here at the J.E.I. compound, we've been blessed to have been privy to this evolutionary horror not once but twice. And doing our inner-Jimmy Olsen proud, we now present a few of the photos. You've been warned.









There is no god... because if there were, he'd never allow something like this.