There are many singularities in the sexual habits of small crustaceans,
the male bopyre lives as parasite on the female, who is four or
five times larger; oddity increased by the female herself being the
parasite of the palemon. It is she who forms the little bloatedness
which one notices, grayish when cooked, on the heads of shrimps,
turned pink. Fishermen state that this spot is a small sole, but they
also tell other yarns: for example, that anatifes, the peduncular
mussels which one sees on drift-wood are the embryos of wild-ducks,
and one noble sailor has himself seen them taking flight.[1] The
male linguatula is also smaller than the female, he has one testicle
but two long copulating organs which simultaneously penetrate the
female, ejaculating toward the two ovaries. Another small male is the
hydrachne, water acarian, two or three times smaller than the female,
he alone is provided with a tail at the end of which are his genital
organs; the female's are formed by a papilla situated beneath the belly
and marked by a white patch surrounding the sluice. The male swims, the
female comes to meet him, lifts herself obliquely and brings her white
spot into touch with her lover's caudal extremity, the junction is
accomplished. One then sees the male drag along the kicking female; the
coupling, with periods of rest, but without interruption of profound
contact continues for several days.
With insects of superior talents it is, on the contrary, the female who
carries off the male: the ant carries hers on her back, while he bends
his abdomen into a bow toward her vulva; thus weighted, she flies,
mounts, planes, then falls with him like a drop of water. He dies on
the spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying.
The fetes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of
the lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females
gleams in the sun like a russet foam. The scutilary is an insect
sometimes squarish or shield-shaped resembling the green wood louse,
sometimes long and cylindrical with points and lines of all colours
on its wings. One of them, scutiform, known as lineata, with red back
and black stripes, is common on umbellifera. Copulation takes place
end to end; one can see them thus, the female towing the smaller male
from leaf to leaf, from umbel to umbel.[2] The forficula also couple
end to end, fleas, whose male is smaller, couple belly to belly with
feet enlaced; the position recalling that of dragon flies is more
remarkable, in the louvette, a small insect which lives on broom, and
readily throws itself upon man: the vulva is in fact, near the mouth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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