RATS AND BATS

When I was in elementary school the "pets du jour" were little white rats. Every kid with willing parents had his or her white rat. I suppose there was an ulterior motive in this, because if we had a daddy rat and a momma rat, we definitely would learn about the birds and the bees, saving our parents having to give us a lesson in sex education. However, we all knew if tiny hairless pink rat babies were born, we had to get daddy rat out of the cage in a hurry because he was apt to eat the babies. We didn't know why, but we knew it was true. And we also knew it wasn't fair to extrapolate from this that males of all species would do something similar, especially human daddies.

So with what I am going to tell you next, I don't want any wild extrapolations, although I know some of you will be sorely tempted.

From a recent AP article comes the following:

"A research team led by Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick found that in bat species where females are promiscuous, males boasting the largest testicles also had the smallest brains. Conversely, where the females were faithful, the males had smaller testes and larger brains.

"'It turns out that size does matter,' said Pitnick...

"'The study offers evidence that males - at least in some species - make an evolutionary trade-off between intelligence and sexual prowess,' said David Hoskens, a biologist at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in England and a leading authority on bats' mating behavior.

"'Bats invest an enormous amount in testes, and the investment has to come from somewhere. There are no free lunches,' said Hoskens, who did not participate in the study."

As you can imagine, I about laughed myself off the couch. And passed the newspaper on to my husband.