Tantalizing Tentacles & See-Through Bodies — Getting it on the Gelatinous Jelly Way
Lewd tales of eroticism from down under — the ocean, that is
You’ve seen them in National Geographic specials.
Or maybe from your own snorkeling and/or scuba adventures.
Those floating, undulating, transparent blobs of gelatinous protoplasm throbbing in the water, with long, undulating tentacles performing an underwater ballet for you.
Only it’s not for you. Sorry, Charlie.
It’s for each other. Or maybe their one and only.
Wait. How can they have a one-and-only? They all look alike.
To you, maybe. Not to them.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of possible mates undulating all around them, they see each other even though they don’t have eyes. There’s a chemical attraction compelling them together from across the crowded ocean depths.
But wait. They all look exactly alike. And they’re transparent. No visible sex organs. No vaginas. No penises. How do they even know who’s a boy and who’s a girl?
Trust me. No wait, Don’t trust me. Trust nature. She knows. And since she knows, they know. Maybe not in a way that makes sense to us. But it doesn’t have to make sense to us. We’re not the ones out looking for a jelly roll in the hay. They are.
And when the time comes, they know how to find what they’re looking for.
Maybe it’s the curve of his tentacles. Or the way he undulates them just so, that turns her on.
Maybe it’s the size or the shape of her orifice that drives him wild with desire.
Whatever it is, and we may never know, they come together at the right place, and the right moment in time and do it. Make mad, passionate jelly- belly love. It may be long and slow or lightning-quick, but it does the trick.
Orgasm?
Or just a spasm?
We may never know, since we’re not inside their one-cell thick epidermis, but they’ve just ensured the survival of their species. And that’s one thing these uber-simplistic organisms are good at.
Reproduction.
So how exactly do they do it?
One of several ways, it turns out.
A species called, of all things, Copula sivickisi, does quite the tango of a courtship dance. As perhaps a precursor to some stereotypical Neanderthal behavior, the male copula grabs his jelly lover by the tentacles with, you guessed it, his tentacles. He then drags her around the ocean for a while, showing off his prowess, before pulling her in close.
Then he produces and releases a spermatophore or sperm packet, and uses his tentacles to pass it to one of her tentacles. Eventually, the pair separates, and the female does the ultimate love act. She eats the sperm packet, thus consummating the union. And yes, she swallows.
But soon thereafter, each of them swims on to mate with other adults. The females stuff their stomachs with packet after packet, sluts that they are. But once their jelly tummies are full, they become unresponsive, often comatose. But they’ve earned their rest.
Male C. sivickisi, on the other hand, stop mating when their four pairs of testes are empty of sperm. No, they don’t offload all four into the same female, as male humans might do. Instead, they spread the wealth around, which helps ensure the all-mighty, aforementioned survival.
How else do they do it?
Well, for jellies on the run, there’s external fertilization.
When there’s no time to tango the proverbial tentacles, the male will simply unload a load of sperm directly into the ocean. No, it may not be as titillating, but it’s efficient.
You might think that’s a big waste of sperm.
But you’d be wrong.
This is no spilling of seed on the ground, that the Bible warns us about. No, in Jelly Land, no sperm is wasted. The medium of the ocean is a perfect container for those manly motile minions. The currents care for them until they get sucked up by the females. Or maybe those little spermies waft their way into those one-size-fits-all orifices we talked about earlier.
So convenient to have just one that triples as a mouth, vagina, and anus. Can you imagine? Hmm. Must be an acquired taste. Anyway, we’ll never know why they prefer that, but maybe the females didn’t get a say-so in it. They just evolved that way.
Remember that scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Jessica Rabbit sashays her hips and says, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn this way.” Similarly, those orifices, could they talk, might say, “We’re not disgusting, we just evolved this way.” Touché.
Happy, sexy, World Jellyfish Day!