It never occurs to me when I look at a species to try and understand how they have sex. I just assume they sleep in nice twin beds carefully separated by a tasteful bit of furniture, perhaps a night stand. I usually am just joyous to be out and about stumbling through Mother Nature, looking for small windows into her beautiful Eden. But, oh no, when you least expect it, she just comes right back with a filthy slap to the face. Like here we have the Banana Slug, school mascot, beloved yellow symbol of UC Santa Cruz, hermaphroditic tantra sex fiend.
The Banana Slug is, like most slugs, a hermaphrodite. The slug will, though prefers not to, have sex with itself if no other slugs are present. The slug then inseminates itself and can even produce a sterile offspring. Otherwise, the slugs reproduce all year round. They find each other by passing through another slugs mucus trail and then begin the hours long mating dance. They believe that the long dance and subsequent tantric mating ritual is to protect and prevent inner breeding between slug-kind. The slugs then alternate inseminating each other, sometimes the passion is so great that the slug will gnaw the genitalia off the other slug and eat the male right off of his mate.
Look if you dare http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/grad/weaver/animations/penischewing.mov.
In the above video the banana slug goes on to eat not only his mates penis but also his own. The grad student stated that the slugs just went on to normal activity right after the event.
In conclusion, this completes my thesis on which sexual organ you would pick if you were given both at birth. You would use it once and then eat your penis. Frankly, I'm shocked at the answer too. Who knew? I would have placed serious odds on the penis going all the way, but no. It's just one of those life long questions you never thought would be answered. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Whew.
I feel compelled to note that the penis is at the head of the animal and so are its lung and anus. You'd think the poor thing probably wrecks itself trying to put the over sized penis in those holes first and then exasperated looks elsewhere. Their sex can last for over a day. Imagine how long it took before it realized it couldn't screw itself in the head first. I think its only so long before you finally feed the giant penis' baffling hunger and decide it really isn't worth carrying around.
I'm also now really creeped out by their mucus, more than usual.
