Oh, what a dream it would be to use my genitals as a weapon to fend off predators.
If only I were as lucky as moths, who, according to research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, have different species of hawkmoths repeatedly evolving to weaponize anti-bat genitalia.
While all I currently have to fend off predators are my lethal fists, male hawkmoths have spent 30 million years rubbing specialized scales on their junk against their abdomens to blast ultrasonic noise directly into the faces of hungry bats.
Noisy genitals. What an innovation.
These Moths Can Blast Ultrasonic Sounds From Their Genitals to Fight Off Predators
Lead author Paul Masonick and his team at the Florida Museum of Natural History examined over 120 species and found that nature didn’t invent this crotch-based sonic-blast jamming once. Hawkmoths have independently evolved genital sonar-scramblers as many as seven separate times through convergent evolution.
They use three entirely different anatomical mechanics and their deployment of their genital defense system
- Scale-on-scale: Rubbing specialized crotch scales against abdominal scales for short bursts.
2. Scale-on-spine: Dragging genital scales across tiny spikes for longer emissions.
3. Scale-on-nodule: Scraping scales over bumpy nodules for a varied array of obnoxious sounds.
Moths equipped with ears hear a bat’s echolocation coming and fire off sustained bursts designed to scramble the bat’s sonar. Deaf moths, who literally cannot see the bat coming, belt out shorter, touch-activated crotch bursts only after a predator grabs them.
Think about all this from the bat’s perspective. You swoop in to grab a meal and then suddenly your prey’s genitals start screaming at you. Do you often eat food whose genitals are screaming at you? I’m going to guess that you don’t, and you wouldn’t, not even if it were really yummy.
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