"beerbarrel" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 03:55:13 GMT, "Honus"
wrote:

Oh, and speaking of homosexuals and your obvious obsession...why do you
have
that dirty word in your e-mail address? What are you trying to tell the
world? Are you going to claim that it's all just an unfortunate
coincidence?




Squim as you will, your gay and you can't handle the truth.

I almost wish I was, just to get even further under your skin. Not
literally, though. Don't go and start typing with just one hand, now.

This is a great post from you...

Wow! Thanks for all of the info!! It's kind of funny...I never thought
about elephant testicles, or the fact that despite frequent visits to
the local zoo I've never observed any. They'd be hard to miss, after
all.

But you looked didn't you Seattle Slew? Your into animals too!

Oh, beerbelly...that's really sad. I had to look that one up. Just to bring
everyone up to date, that's a response that I made in 1998 to a post to a
biologist that I used to know about the fact that most mammals have external
testes. The argument was that contrary to fundamentalist Christian belief,
we're not all that well designed. One of the flaws pointed out by yours
truly was external testicles. If I were the almighty creator, I'd have had a
bit more compassion for my male creations than to leave their pills outside
like that. My biologist acquaintance pointed out the fact that some mammals,
elephants included, have internal testes, showing that God could surely have
done it for us if he'd so desired. He gave me quite a detailed response that
clearly sailed right over beerbelly's head, which is probably partly why he
took my quote out of context. And he says that I have no credibility?
Anyway, the thread's at google for all to see, I stand by it, and it's
actually quite interesting. I encourage people to go there and read it.
(BTW...whales have internal nuts as well. Lucky *******s.)

Here...I'll throw in a little of my friend's post, massively snipped for
brevity. It really is interesting reading, and I'm equally sure that
beerbelly ignored it all.

begin

Yes, the term for it is apparently "testicond". One familiar example is the
Cetacea [streamlined whales & dolphins would look pretty silly with dangly
bits]

Others include monotremes, hyraxes, elephants, manatees, anteaters and
sloths,
& various Insectivora


It seems that some are primitively testicond, but others are secondarily so
[example: cetacea].


The first 2 papers listed below seem to offer alternative hypotheses for
scrotum evolution:


TI On the cause of the mammalian descent of the testes (descensus
testiculorum).
AU FREY-R
SO ZEITSCHRIFT FUER ZOOLOGISCHE SYSTEMATIK UND EVOLUTIONSFORSCHUNG 29(1):
40-65
PY 1991
LS In Ger. with Ger. and Engl. summ.
AB Two explanations have been offered for the descent of the testes in
mammals,
both of which are frequently cited in the literature. MOORE and co-workers
argued that the phylogenetic rise of body temperature caused the
translocation
of the testes. According to PORTMANN, the descent of the testes was due to
the
evolution of the scrotum as a signal. However, both the sensibility of the
extra-abdominal testes to temperature elevations and the optical effects of
the
scrotum can be interpreted as a consequence of testicular descent rather
than
as its cause.

end snipped