The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction

by Wendy Northcutt

  Reference: telegraph.co.uk, weirdasianews.com,

  asylum.com, news.ninemsn.com.au

  Reader Comments

  “What a pre’dic’ament!”

  “Wholly embarrassing.”

  “A man from the country that invented the Chinese Finger Trap should have been able to figure out how to release his piece, ya think?”

  “Apparently this man has never heard of Vaseline.”

  “Talk about a ‘Man of Steel’!”

  “Polishing the bench.”

  “That’s what happens when you the use services of a ‘cheap ho.’”

  A photograph of the man and his metal mistress:

  www.DarwinAwards.com/book/benchpress

  At-Risk Survivor: Pipe Cleaner

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring gonads!

  5 JANUARY 2010, SOUTHAMPTON, UK | Oh dear. Yet another man has got his hoohaw stuck in a pipe, taking many precise maneuvers with a blowtorch and metal grinder to cut him loose from the steel—might as well say it—Iron Maiden. All told, seven firefighters and medics were involved in the delicate operation. “The crew was worried about things getting too hot during the cutting,” said a tongue-in-cheek spokesman for Hampshire Fire and Rescue.

  Reference: The Sun, Daily Telegraph

  As long-time readers know, this isn’t the first man caught laying pipe . . . but not all pipe incidents are lascivious. For instance, check out Mortar Fire, page 155.

  At-Risk Survivor: Single Bud Vase

  Confirmed by Reliable Eyewitness

  Featuring gonads!

  2009 | I am a nurse on a busy surgical unit. I received a report that a young patient was arriving with severe lacerations to his unmentionables. Try as I might, I could not imagine what this poor lad had done to injure himself.

  “You stuck what where?”

  The twenty-one-year-old patient confided to me that, upset by his girlfriend’s unwillingness to have intimate relations, he had romanced a flower vase! Alas, in the heat of the moment, the bud vase shattered, lacerating his penis. He required emergency surgery.

  Afterward, the urologist told us that the boy would require a catheter for weeks, and he was unsure if his mojo would be functional. I felt sorry for the kid . . . but did laugh when I saw his girlfriend walking down the hall, bringing flowers!

  Reference: A Nurse who wishes to remain anonymous

  Reader Comments

  “A new technique for Kenny . . . !” (This Southpark cartoon character frequently dies in freak masturbation accidents.)

  At-Risk Survivor: Battered Sausages

  Confirmed by Reliable Eyewitness

  Featuring gonads, mostly!

  Dr. Kiernan has been a prolific contributor to the Darwin Awards, particularly with urological reports. Four stories from the files of the good doctor . . .

  MARCH 2007 | The most grateful patient I ever treated had found true love with a household vacuum. He presented to me with a very swollen and sorry-for-itself penis, and it was obvious that the member had been somewhere it shouldn’t be. I confronted him, and he denied the truth (wouldn’t you?) until I told him I had a foolproof cure to prevent recurrent damage. He brightened up.

  “Make sure to attach a cardboard toilet-paper roll to the end of the suction first, so you can soak the roll off your happy peewee if it becomes necessary.” He was most grateful for the advice.

  At-Risk Survivor: What a Pickle!

  APRIL 2008 | Our hero sought my urgent professional attention after an accident involving a car and his motorbike, on his way to a Saturday night party. He had sustained a compound broken femur. The management of this life-threatening condition was hampered by his refusal to have his black leather trousers cut off. In fact, we argued with him for ten minutes trying to access his common sense and get his consent, while doing other necessary things to help him medically, of course. As it turned out, it wasn’t the expense of the leather trousers with which he was so preoccupied . . . It was our imminent discovery of the large cucumber in his underwear! Mom always warned us, “Wear clean underwear in case you get hit by a car.” Here’s a new one for Mom to worry about. This gambit is far from unusual. In the rougher parts of outer Sydney no one would want to be reincarnated as a cucumber because . . . well...!

  At-Risk Survivor: Fishing Tackle

  SEPTEMBER 2008 | Daily Telegraph reported that a small fish had found its way into the urethra of a fourteen-year-old boy. The patient was admitted to the hospital with complaints of pain, dribbling, and urinary retention. Floundering for a rationale for his predicament, the boy’s dubious account was that he was cleaning the fish tank in his house and was holding a fish in his hand when he needed to use the toilet. While he was passing urine, the two-cm fish supposedly slipped from his hand and entered his urethra, say Drs. Vezhaventhan and Jeyaraman, who wrote a paper on the unfortunate fish and boy.

  At-Risk Survivor: A Bit Potty

  1960S | My father, also a doctor, treated a man who rode his bicycle six miles one rainy evening to seek advice at the local English hospital. He wore a large, dark raincoat which he refused to remove for the nursing staff. In privacy, he did so for my father, who was most surprised. This surprise did not emanate from the fact that the man had got himself stuck in an old-fashioned clay urinal, but that he had cycled six miles with it hanging from the end of his penis! Needless to say Dad didn’t buy the story of being caught while having a wee. This ended rather badly, I am afraid. Dad claims there was no other way but to break it out with a hammer.

  Could this man thus be a historic Darwin Awardee?

  Reference: Dr. Davida Kiernan

  SCIENCE INTERLUDE WHY BOTHER WITH SEX?

  By Alice Cascorbi

  Not the complaint of a tired housewife or the sour grapes of a frustrated “playah,” but rather a real dilemma for evolutionary biologists. If an organism’s purpose is to propagate its own DNA, why waste time and energy searching for a mate? If its unique genetic code lets it survive and flourish, why dilute that code with another creature’s genes?

  “But don’t we need sex to make babies?”

  Sure, we do. But step outside our species to recognize the big difference between sex (exchanging genes) and reproduction (making offspring). The entire kingdom Prokaryota would consider us perverts if we could explain to them how sex and reproduction coincide within our multicellular selves. Any proper prokaryote would tell you that sex—sharing genes—is something one does with multiple partners, trading bits of DNA via cell-connecting tubes or viral vectors. Reproduction, OTOH, means privately splitting your single-celled self into two identical organisms.

  Strawberries, Sharks, and Komodo Dragons

  Asexual reproduction is actually so common that we barely think about it. Every time you pull a strawberry sucker from your garden or trim a spider plant’s spiders, you’re dealing with asexual reproduction. Bananas, the notoriously phallic fruit, are seedless and propagate by rooting cuttings. And even garlic, that spicy aphrodisiac, reproduces without sex via bulbs.

  All-female clones can continue to reproduce indefinitely, but all-male clones are extinct after one generation. Asexuality can be a dead end!

  And it’s not just plants. Many worms and insects, a boatload of coelenterates (pronounced see LEN’ ter ates’—sea anemones and jellyfish), and even some fish and lizards reproduce asexually. Female sharks raised in captivity have given birth to all-female young whose DNA comes only from their virgin mothers. Ditto for Komodo dragons, except that through a genetic twist, their offspring are all male. Parthenogenesis has been reported as far up the evolutionary ladder as the domestic turkey.

  Why Do Without? The Cost of Sex

  Sex always costs—not necessarily in money, but in the more primal currencies of energy, time, and exposure to danger. Exhausting fights over mates raise the cost of business in the sexual world—ask any stag during rutting season. And consider over-the-top mating displays like the nine-foot blossom of the carrion flower
, the peacock’s tail feathers, or the human’s silly, showy “peacock” brain. (See “Sex on the Brain,” p. 109 for a treatise on human brains and runaway sexual selection.)

  Elaborate mating structures take time and energy to make and increase exposure to predators as well as potential mates. A peacock’s huge tail feathers slow him down; the leopard who pounces on a poky peacock is reaping a cheap lunch subsidized by the cost of sex—fancy plumage—to her prey. Time spent attracting a mate could be spent feeding, gathering energy, and growing clones. Nonsexual creatures avoid all that mating hassle by just doing it solo.

  Lesbian Lizards

  The most fascinating sex-free creatures are the ones who have given up sex after enjoying it for millions of years. There are all-female species of whiptail lizard, blue-spotted salamander, and topminnow. Tellingly, all of these species have mating behaviors that show their recent evolution from sexual ancestors. All-female blue-spotted salamanders mate with males of related species; the sperm triggers development of their eggs, but contributes no genes. The live-bearing desert topminnow, Poeciliopsis lucidus, does the same.

  Whiptail lizards of the desert Southwest go one step further: Members of the all-female species Cnemidophorus uniparens take on male-like behavior and mate with other females in a process called pseudocopulation. Their female-on-female behavior stimulates egg production and the birth of clones.

  If so many organisms get along fine without sex, why are the rest of us still doing it? Especially, note evolutionists dryly, when mathematical models show that asexual females should take over any population within fifty generations, due to the time and energy they save.

  But—that’s fifty generations without natural selection—with no new trends in weather, no new diseases, no new tricks by your predators. Do you see the problem?

  Nature is never free of natural selection. Even when the physical environment is stable, the ecosystem of predators and pathogens is not. You are food for them, and if there is one thing stronger than the sex drive, it is the need to feed. Even Darwin would agree: You must survive until you can pass on your genes. Food comes before sex, and organisms will do anything to get it—or avoid becoming it—even swap genes. If everyone else is swapping genes in an arms race to eat you, and you’re standing there having sex with yourself, you’re falling behind.

  In a nutshell, sex is an engine of diversity: More varieties of organisms are birthed when they are conceived with a partner. A family of clones is obviously less diverse than a family with mixed genes. And when your genotype is the delicious flavor of the day, you’ll want to make sure your offspring are something your predators have never tasted before. Whether you need faster legs, a longer tongue, or slimier skin—sex is the way to go.

  Now that the case has been made in favor of sex, how do creatures get by without it? If a hungry world is chasing them, why do lesbian lizards have any place in nature?

  Studies show that asexual plants and animals thrive in marginal environments with little competition, but cannot compete with sexual relatives in mainstream habitats. Asexual butterflies flutter on alpine mountaintops, asexual plants pop up in plowed fields and after volcanic eruptions, and asexual vertebrates make their homes where it’s hot, icy, or dry. Note that the all-female species mentioned above are the desert topminnow and lizards of the desert Southwest. These asexual desert creatures have close relatives living in more appealing climates—lounging on beaches, soaking in tropical pools—who reproduce using sex.

  In a marginal habitat, it pays to pass on to your children your proven genotype, unchanged. Only a few things can live where you live, and on balance, it’s best to stick with the tried and true. And saving energy with low-cost solo reproduction is a big help too.

  Asexuals live where the environment allows natural selection to slow down.

  #1 Reason for Sex: Aliens!

  OK, then—since sex is a choice, why choose sex?7

  Field studies indicate that the number one reason for sex is biological interactions between species. Mainstream habitats are rich in predators, pathogens, and parasites. Sex, by shuffling genes, is especially good at protecting against parasites and disease. Studies in the lab—evolution in a bottle—show that those odd creatures that switch between sexual and asexual reproduction, like the water snail, Potomopyrgus antipodarum, get sexy when their parasites start hopping.

  Japanese knotweed, Polygonum cuspidatum, a handsome but rather unwelcome invasive weed, is one of the first to colonize fresh lava fields in its native Japan. Its ability to flex sexual and non-sexual generations is its strength as a hardy colonizer. A single asexual clone of Japanese knotweed is now invading northern Europe. Although this clone would not stand a chance back home, far from its native pests and predators—the weed is nearly invincible—See Bailey, Bímová, and Mandák, “Asexual spread versus sexual reproduction and evolution in Japanese Knotweed,” Biological Invasions 11, no. 5 (2009).

  You see, it’s the tiniest “predators” that evolve the fastest. Compare the life cycle of a flea (four weeks) to its prey, your cat, or compare a human life span to the two-week flu virus life cycle. Pathogens have many extra generations for natural selection to work, so they quickly hone in on the genetic weaknesses of, well, you. Prey must evolve, shift genetic profiles, to combat these enemies. Evolutionary biologists call this the “Red Queen Hypothesis” and liken the costly persistence of sexual reproduction to the Lewis Carroll character who had to keep running to stay in place.

  Dandelions

  Both sexual and asexual lifestyles have their niches, and a great example lives as close as your backyard.

  In their native Eurasia dandelions grow as normal flowers, producing male pollen carried by bees to fertilize female ovules. But dandelions have also evolved asexual lines that clone themselves and send out seeds containing identical DNA. The “old sod” in Europe is golden with sexual dandelions, but it is the asexual ones that have blanketed the virgin continent of North America. They are a beautiful example of just when asexual reproduction is best. Far from their native pests and pathogens, sex-free dandelions have colonized every lawn in the USA because they are able to spread faster than their sexual relatives—even while wasting energy producing cheery yellow flowers that no bee will ever fertilize.

  So the next time you’re in the mood to mate, stop and consider an alternative used by bananas, bacteria, lizards, and sharks. Maybe it is better to close the curtains and just do it yourself.

  REFERENCES:

  Crews, Grassman, and Lindzey, “Behavioral facilitation of reproduction in sexual and unisexual whiptail lizards,” Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 83 (1986), 9547-9550.

  Juliet Eilperin, “Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find.” The Washington Post, http://tinyurl.com/2aaau4

  Lively, Craddock, and Vrijenhoek, “Red Queen hypothesis supported by parasitism in sexual and clonal fish,” Nature 344 (1990), 864 -866.

  Lively and Joleka, “Temporal and spatial distributions of parasites and sex in a freshwater snail,” Evolutionary Ecology Research 4 (2002), 219-226.

  Thomas F. Savage, “A Guide to Recognition of Parthenogenesis in Incubated Turkey Eggs,” Oregon State University (2008), http://tinyurl.com/y56s4xj

  CHAPTER 7

  WOMEN: WILL SHE OR WON’T SHE?

  “Sorry about your loss. On a brighter side, you could have lost this one . . .”

  —Fan mail snark

  Women are evolution’s greatest gift. They nurture, protect, and educate their offspring, ensuring survival of the next generation. In fact, female Darwin Award winners are incredibly rare! But they do appear from time to time, and we’ve collected seven of these elusive elegies here.

  Double Dip • She Talks Faster Than She Walks • Wetting the Bed • Missed (but Not Missed By) the Bus • A Clear Lesson • Epitaph—She Liked Feathers • Pill Pusher

  For more female contenders, see:

  Not Even Half-Baked, p. 17,

  Christmas Light Zinger, p
. 188,

  and Medieval Mayhem, p. 238.

  Darwin Award Winner: Double Dip

  Confirmed by Darwin

  Featuring a woman, water, alcohol, and a moped

  3 JUNE 2009, NORTH CAROLINA | Greensboro was inundated with four inches of pouring rain in two hours, stranding cars on flooded roads. Rosanne T., on her moped, was not deterred. She hopped on and drove to a convenience store where she “possibly had a beer,” according to her mother, before deciding to blunder home through the storm.

  “My moped has two rubber wheels, Mom, I’ll be fine.”

  North Carolina does not require a license to drive a moped.

  Ms. T. had acquired hers two years previously after a DUI conviction.

  The highway patrol had blocked off several roads that were flooded, including Rosanne’s path home. But she rode right past the officer and the barriers, lost control of her vehicle, and fell into the swollen creek below. The officer retrieved rope from his vehicle and proceeded to haul her from the water, saving her from potential doom.

  He then interviewed the woman, presumably inquiring about her motives for speeding through a police roadblock during a flash flood. When the officer returned to his patrol car to call in the incident, Rosanne took the opportunity to escape—by jumping back into the creek!