Unintelligent Design: How Come Men's Testicles Can't Do What My Parrot's Testicle Can?
Offline All birds including my parrot carry their sexual organs internally. Most don't even have a rudimentary cock, if you'll excuse the pun. Some waterfowl have a pseudo dick, but most birds manage just fine cloaca to cloaca.
In certain species, some dual internal organs have been reduced to a single functional organ for survival reasons. Snakes only have one functional lung. Parrots only have one functional ovary or testicle. In female birds, sometimes the smaller, dormant ovary will start functioning if something happens to the other one. Male parrots have one functional, entirely internal, testicle and no one-eyed trouser snake. If I remember correctly, a parrot's body temperature is maintained at around 102 degrees Fahrenheit, which is much hotter than the body of human being, yet the sperm of a human being can't be produced at 98.6. It needs a cooler region.
Why can't men do that? Those two glands are exposed and tender. Every male learns early on to protect his nether regions. Can you imagine trying to do that while flying through a rainforest? Oh shit...kapok tree...whoops...shit...vine coming...damn...fuck! That was a stupid place to put a vine...HOLY CHRIST IS THAT A HARPY EAGLE...OH MY FUCKING GOD!
And scientists: why is it that my warm-blooded little dinosaur can produce sperm internally at a high temperature? There has to be a really interesting evolutionary adaptation story here.
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Lets see if I can flip this around for fun.
I have two functional testes while your bird only has one. My testes can be played with, while his are forever locked up. And as far as the temperature bit goes, can your bird produce sperm at 37C? Sure it can pull it off at 39C, but can it do so at 37C? Perhaps it's just that a parrot can't handle as much of a temperature difference as a human?
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I wasn't sure what I was getting into whe I opened this thread but...Vastet and Iruka: I fell off my chair laughing. You are both funny as hell.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
=)
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Let's see if Gabby can flip around for fun:
Yep.
Now let's see if I can turn back time to be suddenly younger and thinner...nope.
Pocket pool fan, are you? What's your high score?
And how do you know my parrot doesn't have erogenous zones he can reach with his beak?
Why couldn't we find out? I'll stick Gabby in the freezer for a half hour, then give him a copy of Playbird Magazine.
This reminds me of that old parrot joke:
A dude buys a parrot at a flea market and takes it home, only to learn it swears like a sailor. His old mother is very religious and he blushes just to think of introducing her to his new pet. He decides to teach the parrot not to swear.
The first time the parrot swore, he stuck it in the freezer for five minutes. When the parrot came out it was shaking all over and its beak was rattling.
"Now, are you going to watch your language?" asked the man.
"Good bird!" replied the parrot. "I'm a good bird!"
"All right then."
The second time the parrot swore, the owner put it in the freezer for 15 minutes. When the parrot came out, he was once again repentant. But just a few minutes later he was swearing again like Cartman on a rampage against the Jews.
This time the owner put the parrot in the freezer for two hours. When he let the bird out, he asked, "Now, are you really going to stop swearing?"
The parrot was beyond shivering and he had turned blue under his feathers. "Yeah," he said. "I just have one question."
"What's that?"
"What the fuck did that turkey in there say?"
***DISCLAIMER: Never put a live animal in a freezer***
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Actually we guys can carry our testicles internally. My Dad did a lot of karate when he was younger and that was something they were taught - that is, how to pop them up into the pelvic gidle.
I thought that was kind of gross until he explained the alternative was getting a power kick to the stones and having them explode.
0_0
Freedom of religious belief is an inalienable right. Stuffing that belief down other people's throats is not.
Ummm..ouch? I think mine just went internal for a sec there.
"When you hit your thumb with a hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a special kind of atheist to jump up and down shout, 'Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!'"-Terry Pratchett
Well he's got me beat there. I can't do flips on your finger.
Guess it's all downhill for me. :'(
I love all games.
Ahem. No comment. > >
I don't. I'm sure he does. But the girl of his dreams will never play with his balls.
Lmao.
Lol. As much as he hates jews, it's the hippies that really piss him off.
Lol. Haven't heard that joke before.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
:\
They just gave me a cup and a jock strap. > >
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I did not know that. Geez, you learn something new every day...not that it does me any good.
The point is sperm counts decrease when the testicles are kept too warm. My brother had low sperm counts from working in hot attics every day. It took him quite awhile to get his wife pregnant. My college biology teacher--who was never able to have children--described how tight underwear affects sperm counts.
Meanwhile my African grey parrots had a very high fertility rate back in the day. I no longer breed parrots, but it was interesting experience.
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You could simply flip me the finger.
Flip me the bird? 
Double eagle?
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I think this is just more proof that living beings were not designed. Creationists think that the human body is a "perfect machine", that everything in it has a purpose, so it must have been designed by god.
You just gave another example how the human body is not perfect. If someone kicks a male in the balls it really hurts like hell. It's a big disadvantage to have testicles outside the body.
I guess evolution decided to do it the easy way. Instead of making testicles less vulnurable, it decided to develop the brain. It propably takes a long time to evolve the body to make sperm in hot temperature inside the body. Humans didn't have time to evolve in such a way. They had to become smart and fast, because otherwise we would have gone extinct a long time ago. That's my theory
.
Edit: Wait a minute. Don't all mammals have testicles outside their body? Why would that be? Why can't they just evolve those things to generate sperm in a hotter temperature? If birds can do it then what's wrong with mammals? Is it really that hard? Stupid evolution
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Trust and believe in no god, but trust and believe in yourself.
You know, I'm rather curious as to why birds are capable of this. Is their sperm different? How? Does it have anything to do with the fact birds lay eggs? I know nothing about the testes of monotremes. Maybe I should inquire?
I think the key to understanding the difference is understanding why mammal sperm cannot develop properly at body temperature and maybe looking into when and how warm-bloodedness evolved in mammals, dinosaurs and pterosaurs. (It's theorized any flying animal would have to be warm-blooded. We don't know this for sure.)
If you want to get technical, dinosaurs were probably also capable of this feat. I'm guessing pterosaurs evolved internal testicle(s), also. Hanging body parts create drag, after all.
So of the animal classes we know (or suspect) of being warm-blooded, only mammals had a problem with internal sperm production. (of course, the distinction toward dinosaurs and birds may not exist.) Hmmmm...maybe we're the odd ones?
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Looks like I was on the right track. Look what I found in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicle
I also found an interesting paper on the evolution of endothermia: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1328175&blobtype=pdf
What I've read so far makes sense. He says birds' body temperatures are more variable than those of mammals, BUT the lowest body temperature is 99 degrees, which is still pretty damn high.
Looking more...
If you find an answer, let me know. It would be an interesting thing to research.
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