Strong Scents of Male

Making the rounds this week was this amusing and entertaining video from Mary Roach, author of several books - of which I've only read Spook - but Stiff is in my "to read" pile, as is "Bonk" - from which much of this material comes. (pardon)



The video is entertaining and informative - but the part that really struck me (besides the non-prurient pig masturbation) was the section that starts at the 5:30 mark. It highlights some of the work of researcher and writer Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde. In van de Velde's writing (per Roach) he mentions the smell of a mature man's semen as being similar to the scent of a Spanish Chestnut's flowers.

This brought to mind some research I'd done a long time ago on this matter. My wife said that a tree in the back yard of my mother's house smelled like semen when it flowers. I agreed with her and found it similar - yet slightly stronger like what I imagines a sperm bank with a faulty freezer unit might end up smelling like after a day or two.

Not content to just note the similarity, I looked around for any literature on the matter and came across a lengthy discourse on the "Straight Dope" board. Here's the link - but the page has a lot of additional material non-topical to this matter, so I'll include the salient quote. Always give "Cecil" a read if you have time, though.
This is a link to that article (down the page below the piercing question).

REPORTS FROM THE FRINGE, PART ONE

Dear Cecil:

Abhorrent as it is to speak of such matters, I must corroborate your reader's recent observation about certain trees in Los Angeles that smell like semen in the fall. I have two of these funky-smelling (in the original sense of the word meaning "bitch dog in heat") trees in my backyard in Laurel Canyon. They are ugly, have grotesque hairy blossoms, and smell so bad that bees and flies both share the nectar. It is disconcerting for me and I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice it. --R.H., Los Angeles

PS: I have no idea what they're called.

Dear R.H.:

I can see it's going to be one of those weeks. Due to the press of business, I haven't had had a chance to go hunt down the sperm trees of Los Angeles myself. However, David Lofgren, a botanical information consultant at the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum, speculates that the plant in question is the carob tree, Ceratonia siliqua, source of the well-known chocolate substitute. The tree, which grows only in Mediterranean climates like LA's, typically is around 30 feet tall and has bluish green leaves that are rounded on the end. At blossom time it has many little flowers, which may give the appearance of hairiness. In the fall and winter it produces sweet, juicy pods that conceivably could produce the smell of semen when they rot. However, if one of Cecil's devoted readers will be so kind as to send him a sample of the offending tree's leaves, blossoms, pods, or whatever, we will get to the bottom of this matter once and for all.
The discussion goes on from there... go to the SD page for the full discourse.

In "Cecil's" research he's referred to the Carob tree by botanist David Lofgren.
Also Ginko trees. (We have these at my office, and the smell shows up there sometimes.)
Florida "Punk Trees" are implicated.
California Privet.
A Chesnut. (Cecil postulates "Chinese" - but perhaps it was Spanish as in TvdV's example?)

"Cecil" comes to the conclusion that the correct tree hasn't been identified. Yet it seems more likely that a variety of trees produce a comparable odor. I wonder why? And is the chemical involved in the odor the same as that in Semen? Or is this a result of convergent evolution?

There may not be any benefit to having heavily scented semen. Especially if one is trying to convince a lover to swallow it. But based on my research (still preliminary) evolution doesn't favor oral sex for the benefit of the male. (Now female directed oral sex - that's all over the place in the animal kingdom.)

So if humans don't use scent for selection (though there is a lot of evidence that they DO in fact) then why have such a scent. And more importantly why have such a similar scent in multiple plants? Do we really want bees and flies attracted to semen? (I don't! - and I certainly don't want any honey produced by such a misguided hive.)

It's a mystery - but one worth investigating. I'll put this one on the list of "things to keep looking into" and get back to it in the future.

Mind Controlled Robots - Time for a Faux Pearl Necklace?

In the April 1st (no joke) episode of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, the crew - including the neurologist Dr. Steve Novella, discussed what possible applications could need mind control where manual control or voice control wasn't just as good.

And the immediate - and obvious - use to my mind, is enhanced teledildonics.

In case you've never heard of teledildonics, it is the field of science(?) that handles remote-controlled sex toys. Now recent inventions like the "Real Touch" synthetic sex orifice have worked on the idea that a visual component (a video) is needed with the synthetic orifice. (They say "orifice" because it is penis-centric technology and could be used to simulate straight/gay vaginal/anal sex. In other words, it could either be an electric anus or vagina. (I bet my mom is so proud of helping me go to college as an English major.)

Anyway, the technology discussed on the SGU allows some simple manipulation of robotic mechanisms via a hat. What kinds of activity might you be engaged in where your hands were actively doing something and your mouth was busy so that it couldn't speak out a command, but you wanted to be able to control a robotic device? Looks like "in bed" isn't just for appending to fortune-cookies anymore!

I foresee a time when a pair of consenting adults can be engaged in the most remarkable activities wherein many orifices are stimulated by friend and faux. I won't spell out what I'm thinking - but I can almost guarantee it'll be illegal in The South.

-The Dirty Skeptic

A Seminal Event in Urban Legends

There is an urban legend that goes like this:

"Did you hear about [popular rock star]? He got sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. They had to pump his stomach and they found out it had a gallon of semen in it!"

I heard this story in the late 1980's and even though I was no skeptic back then, I still thought the story sounded fishy. I didn't have the resources like www.snopes.com to look up the facts, or the proper reference materials to work out the logistics of such a ridiculous claim.

But I do now. And while Snopes does a nice job of explaining that yes, this is an urban legend, I think a little "show your work" might have been in order. Let's do it here. Right here - right now!

What are the logistics of such a fellatious feat? What do we need to know to figure out whether this story is even possible?

If we go with the most common version of the story that I've heard, we're dealing with a gallon of semen. Snopes mentions 7 ounces, 1 gallon and 10 gallons.

OK, then what's the capacity of the human stomach?

According to my research the human stomach can hold around a liter of food, but can be distended to hold up to 4 liters. (A discomfortable thought.) It turns out that 1 gallon is equal to 3.79 liters - which is very close to the maximum capacity of a stomach. If our story were true, this seems the most likely quantity of man juice. (10 gallons has to be discarded as a hypothesis because it exceeds the maximum possible stomach capacity.)

How big are these numbers?

7 oz = .21 liters = 14 tablespoons
1 gallon = 3.79 liters = 256 tablespoons

According to my research on semen volume, the average ejaculation contains about 5cc of semen.

If the 7 oz story were correct, that would equate to 210 cc - or 42 loads of sploodge.

If the 1 gallon story were correct?
1 liter = 1000 cc
3.79 liters = 3790 cc
3790/5 = 758 ejaculations worth of semen.

If each man came but once into [famous rock star]'s mouth - that's a lot of guys to have to keep a pretty shocking secret. (And it's a long wait in line, too.)

We can presume the real premise of the story is that [famous rock star] is secretly gay and has these huge man orgies where he gives mouth-service to a long line of gentlemen callers. (Snopes calls it a "sour grapes" story.)

Mathematically, the story is just silly. 758 guys didn't stand in line for this. If each oral service session that [famous rock star] had to give lasted a mere 5 minutes, it would take more than 2 and a half days of non-stop sucking. (758 x 5 = 3790 minutes ... 3790 min/60 = 63.16 hours ... 63.16/24 = 2.63 days)

I don't care how dedicated you are, nobody can stay awake sucking cocks for 2.6 days. You have to stop to sleep every now and then, and sooner or later your mouth would get dry or you'd need to go take dump... It's just not feasible.

758 men would probably have difficulty standing in line for 2.6 days too. Of course they could come in shifts.

OK - what if it wasn't other men's sploodge? Like what if [famous rock star] did drink a gallon of semen, but it was his own? Is that possible? Well, based on the 5 cc baseline, if [famous rock star] masturbated once per day into a gallon container, he could achieve the required 758 ejaculations in just over 2 years. Not a completely impossible task, but one wonders whether the 5 cc average could be maintained with a daily ejaculation? (Thanks to alert reader Jeremy for catching my previous math mistake.)

So, the bottom line is that we can safely presume this story to be false, because if it were true over 2.6 days the semen being ingested would be digested and there wouldn't be a gallon of the stuff to pump out at the ER.

But what if it were just 7 oz? That's still 42 loads of sploodge. At 5 mins per blowjob, that still takes [famous rock star] 3 and a half hours of marathon blow job delivery. I suspect there might possibly be people out there who could blow 42 guys in a setting - but [famous rock star] is not one of them. Next time you hear this story or any version of it, you can say, "that story is logistically unlikely to be true." After all, just because you think [famous rock star]'s music sucks, it doesn't necessarily mean that he himself sucks.

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