Photo: maikid (Getty)
We imagine the line of turtles looking to sign up for this study stretches for miles.
According to Gizmodo, turtle dick is a real thing, and in order to help save the turtles, scientists are going around using vibrators on them in an effort to determine the sex of their subjects.
“To really understand what is going on with a population and how to conserve it, you need to be able to distinguish males and females,” James Cook University’s Donald McKnight said. “We weren’t doing this because we thought it would be fun. We did this because we were trying to find a less invasive method of sexing problematic turtles.”
There was the option of literally slicing open each turtle to see if it was either male or female, but that obviously seemed like it would be rather counterproductive and just a tad less enjoyable for the turtle. So after reading a study from 2013, McKnight and his team decided to go the vibrator route instead.
Instead of stealing his sister’s gadget, McKnight and his team hopped online and purchased the cheapest vibrator they could find. The vibrator of choice? You guessed it: A “a small, silver bullet-style sex toy.” It was then time to find some turtles and give them what can only be classified as “an unexpected Tuesday afternoon.”
“We held the turtle at an angle so that the bottom portion of its shell was facing the researcher,” McKnight said. “We then would slowly move the vibrator around to different parts of the turtle and watch how it responded.”
McKnight and his team found that “direct stimulation of the tail – where the penis is sheathed – was usually the trigger for an erection,” but many of the turtles required a little foreplay or a “bit of warming up” first.
“We had to vibrate elsewhere and periodically test the tail to see if they would let us keep the vibrator there without tensing up.”
Sounds like a real treat for McKnight and his team, and we wish them the best of luck in their endeavors.
