Self-Castration beneficial?

[Deleted]

Pictured: After mating, the much smaller male left a sexual organ, indicated at top center, in the female.

Males of a tropical species of orb-web spider castrate themselves, either partly or fully, after mating.

It might seem a self-destructive habit, but in removing their genitals, a new study reports, the spiders are actually improving their reproductive success. By becoming a half eunuch or full eunuch, the spider reduces its weight by 4 to 9 percent. It then stands guard by the female it has mated with. Its lighter weight allows it to better fend off other males.

“When invaders — intact males — come in, eunuchs fight and do much better than the intact males,” said Daiqin Li, a behavioral ecologist at the National University of Singapore and one of the study’s authors. By keeping away other males and preventing females from mating again, the eunuchs can reduce sperm competition and maximize their own reproductive success. The researchers found that half eunuchs had a 32 percent increase in their endurance levels and full eunuchs an 80 percent increase.

All this is contingent on male spiders even surviving to this stage, however.

About 75 percent of the time, females of the species Nephilengys malabarensis cannibalize males after copulating. Females are aggressive, and much bigger and heavier than males, Dr. Li said. Males can mate a maximum of two times in their lifetime, depending on whether they remove one or both of their sperm-delivery appendages.

The study appeared in a recent issue of the journal Biology Letters.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/sc....html?src=recg

[barnaby]

somehow i don't think this will correlate over to humans...

[Reg]

Hmm, if my dong weighed 9% of my body weight, it would weigh 20lbs... lol

[Fuzzzie]

somehow i don't think this will correlate over to humans...

Yeah.. gotta wonder where the fuck you're going with this...

[Adam Jensen]

Suddenly I'm really glad I'm not a spider.

[Ovacor]

I understand what the study shows; however, I am not understanding your question.

Would male humans benefit from this? Quite honestly, it does not matter because 99.99999999% of us would not ever do it, even if it made us fucking immortal.

The more entertaining question is this, "Biting the head off of your spouse, beneficial?"

[Lilbruz]

Lets face it...self castration could be good for certain individuals for the greater good of mankind

[TofuBeast]

I should cut off my testicles so I can better fend off competing males.

[Reg]

I'd like to think my dick helps to increase my fighting ability. I mean, it is the source of all my powers...

[Fuzzzie]

This is really a downward spiral of nonsense. I don't know what the OP wants to get out of this..