It’s Official Guys, Our Seed Is No Longer Needed

If this isn’t a blow to the male ego, I don’t know what is! I always thought I was good for something. That I served some sort of purpose on this earth, but now I’m having second thoughts. In the movies you’ll hear some naggy woman harping on her man saying he is "good for nothing". Well to that I always had a rebuttal in my head. Of course I never verbally blurted it out in the theater because that would be classified as psycho behavior, arguing with a screen actress, while she’s still on the actual screen. So I would have this inner argument in my head. Which I realize now as I’m writing this, it seems just as crazy, if not MORE crazy, then shouting at the movie screen. Anyway, I digress. Men have always been good for something, right? We are good at paying for dinner, cutting the grass, fixing a flat, moving heavy furniture, taking out the garbage and some of us can even hang a picture. These are all talents, or rather handyman skills, that a woman desires in a man. If we perform these duties in a timely matter often enough and without being asked or reminded to do so, then there is a good chance we will be rewarded – with sex. To men, this reward is priceless! To put it bluntly, a man knows no greater joy than getting laid. Often, it’s our sole purpose of existence! What else is there to live for - taking out the garbage? I don’t think so.

Once a woman is close to reaching age 30, many go into this state of panic! They feel their internal clock tic-toc ticking away. They sink their claws into the first man they see within a 20 foot radius and claim him! They club him over the head, bound his hands and feet, and drag him back to their cave. Or lair, since this is the work of the devil, the she-devil! (Obviously, there is a bit of dramatic effect here and a small amount of exaggeration. So don’t send me hate mail scolding and lecturing me that women only bind the hands and not the feet.)

When a woman has her new-found man in her cave (no pun intended, ok pun intended), she uses him for sexual purposes. Now not for pleasure, but for seed spreading. She’s looking for at least one good swimmer. A Michael Phelps in the sperm world. To a woman like this, sex can seem like a chore or a necessarry act one needs to endure in order to conceive. So naturally, they need a man to help them accomplish this goal of conception. I’m sorry fellas. I too would like to believe they want to ravish our bodies and use our giggle sticks for their own dirty, devious sins. But unfortunately, they are just using us for our prized ejaculate. Want more bad news? Now women don’t even need our semen, AKA they don’t need us! Or at least in the shark world a female doesn’t need a male to reproduce. Let me introduce you to the Virgin Mary of sharks!

The first time it happened, scientists thought it might be a fluke. A female hammerhead shark residing at a zoo in Omaha, Nebraska had not been in contact with male sharks for at least 3 years and yet experienced a "virgin birth". She delivered a single pup. And now it has happened again! This time a blacktip shark had spent nearly her entire 8 years at the Virginia Aquarium without any male companionship from her kind. In what some religions might call a miracle, science calls "parthenogenesis". Using DNA fingerprinting techniques used in human paternity tests, scientists have determined that the solitary offspring contained no genetic material from a father. Scientists say it is reasonable to assume that female sharks can do this on occasion. Surely it happens in the wild, but nobody has been able to prove it yet. There's no reason that keeping a shark in captivity would cause a fundamental change in the reproductive system. But yet, something remarkable is happening! This asexual reproduction occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell.

Sharks have suffered steep declines in all of the world's oceans, either inadvertently caught by fishing nets and hooks or targeted for shark fin soup marketed as a delicacy in China. Some scientists have suggested that this may be a last-ditch way for severely depleted populations to reproduce if their numbers fall so low that males cannot find females. So much for the Adam and Eve story. Adam is no longer a necessary part of the equation.

I’ve always thought women are the stronger sex. Think about it. No man could bleed for 5 days straight every month and live to tell about it. But yet women do this. And child birth? Oh, no, no, no! You will NOT see me ever going thru that! That looks excruciatingly painful! My theory is this is just the evil workings of woman to help rid the world of men. These days, women want to rule the world. And in some areas, they do! So what do they need a "good for nothing" man for? Men aren’t even needed when it comes to reproduction. Although I'm sure we will be called upon when a spider runs across the floor. Yes, that will be man's purpose - exterminator and garbage man. Women can keep the population going without the help of us, but perhaps they’ll take out our giggle sticks every now and then strictly for fun though? We can only hope.