From Harper’s February Findings:
[M]ale serotine bats who mated in the attic of a Dutch church were found to have enormous penises that they used not for penetration but for manipulation.
So many questions here. Is the church attic integral to this phenomenon? Are the Netherlands integral to this phenomenon?
What do the male bats manipulate with those enormous penises? How do the male bats use those penises for manipulation? Do those penises have opposable thumbs? If not, I’m figuring all they can do with those penises — aside from the usual thing — is push dusty church objects around, providing that the church has dusty objects stored in its attic.
Are these the only bats on the earth who have this peculiarity? Can Darwin answer any of my questions?
Give me an item like this and look where my mind goes. I search endlessly for logic, for facts, for reasons why. And I came up with this, from the U.K.’s Natural History Museum. (If you don’t like bats, don’t click on this link because your screen will be filled with a GIGANTIC picture of a serotine bat, and it has sharp teeth which can pierce through your screen and bite you in the neck.)
Turns out these bats do have a problem re sex so they’ve developed another way to mate. So it comes back to asking why these bats evolved in this way. I thought the lives of species were advanced through evolution, not made more problematic.
Last question. Can we consider this item as connected to the god problem?