Legends about mythical monsters don’t always come from oral tradition that fertilizes a newt into a dragon. Sometimes people really goddamn saw that sea monster. Probably.
Today’s Moment of Science… Dorks.
Nature is goddamn filthy. And I don’t just mean that there are germs, I mean the critters are doing it weird. If you want your kids to grow up pure and innocent, keep them the fuck away from Animal Planet. Giraffes are ritualistic piss drinkers, dolphins masturbate with electric eel fleshlights, and some species of whales? Noisy threesomes. Since they haven’t mastered the blowjob with the aptly named hole, this water aerobics of love occasionally leaves an odd dick out.
Or, given that this is a term for the whale penis, the odd dork out.
I can hardly blame cetaceous Aquaman for displaying a six foot schlong on the water’s surface just for funsies. When you have a prick long enough to start a legend, fuck with the locals and become a legendary prick. Because for the forward thinking sailor in a time before we even knew what dinosaurs were, what were the possible interpretations of this six foot something flopping out of the ocean?
A tentacle?
A serpent?
A monster?
These weren’t terrible or illogical guesses at the time.
If someone was just trying to get a shipment of whateverthefuck to whereverthefuck in an era when cell service was a tad shaky, poking the sea monster to verify sea monster status was a bad gamble. If you want to live to tell the tale about the thing that was obviously definitely a sea monster you saw with your own eyeholes, don’t poke the sea monster.
Though moby’s dick was not necessarily the culprit in every alleged kraken sighting, there’s research supporting that it’s happened. A 2005 paper festively titled “Cetaceans, sex and sea serpents: an analysis of the Egede accounts of a “most dreadful monster” seen off the coast of Greenland in 1734” explored the subject. Published in the Archives of Natural History, it evaluated firsthand accounts of a beast that was, in all likelihood, a humpback whale “in a state of arousal.”
Lustful leviathans of legend, if you will. Obviously my band name.
The most famous photo of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster is a complete fabrication, a snap created with “a toy boat and some putty.” Any resemblance to Flipper’s cock is purely coincidental.
This has been your Moment of Science, putting the kibosh on the rumor that sea monster ejaculate contributes significantly to ocean salinity levels.
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