-- Eek! -- Meuianga, what is this?
-- Aargh! It is horrible!
-- What is this ape doing? It is disgusting!
Wait, Cadets, wait. I understand, I understand. This image is a little unsettling!
-- Meuianga, we really need your explanation.
Yes, of course, cadets. Let me go on, and everything will appear clear to you. First of all, you understand that this specimen is female, right?
-- The proportions of the face, yes....
-- A female naked ape. We recognize then, by now.
Yes, she is a young female, and she is doing something to enhance her secondary sexual signals. You need to learn that, for the naked apes, sex is very important. And that's understandable. In all species in the universe, sex is important.
-- Still, this female is weird.
It all right, cadets. We go step by step, so, let's start with the usual observation exercise. Tell me what do you note in this image?
-- Why is it so red?
-- And why so small?
Very good, cadets. You are doing well. Let's start with the observation that the mouth is small. Indeed it is. Compare it with your mouth, and you can see that. But, today, we are not going to discuss about the size of the mouth -- which is a hugely interesting story, indeed -- but only about its red color.
-- Tell us the reason!
I am pleased with you, cadets. This is the right attitude. So, let me tell you the first reason for these fleshy excrescences called "lips." As you know, mammals are creatures that develop inside females; they are ejected out when they are still at a very early stage of development. Very young mammals need to be supported with a nourishing liquid called "milk," secreted by special glands that females have. These are called "mammaries," and we'll discuss that in a later lesson. For now, you may understand that the milk suction process needs a specialized mouth shape. They have these fleshy excrescences to bind to the surface of the female glands and operate the suction.
- ........
Yes, cadets, I understand that it is a little disgusting, but it is how things stand. Of course, we reptiles have no need for such an organ. We are a superior species, with our young being born out of eggs, already able to tear flesh out of our prey and eat it!
-- This thing called "milk"
-- It is a little disgusting, yes, but mammals are mammals. We know that they are an inferior kind of creatures.
Not just that, cadets, not just that. The story of milk explains the shape of these excrescences, these "lips." But it doesn't explain why the mouth is red. And for this you need to understand the concept of "secondary sexual signal." I see that you are looking at me with a perplexed expression, cadets. But let me explain. The naked apes of planet Earth share with us, Reptilians, several similarities in terms of the metabolic mechanism, although not everything. In any case, being complex organisms, they tend to fight the growth of entropy by mating and reproducing. The idea is to create new genetic combinations in order to better adapt to a changing environment. But this you know from your studies. The point is that mating between males and females requires a certain degree of communication before you get to the actual mating. This happens in most species we know, including ours. And this mechanism of communication is called "courtship," in which males and females signal to each other their willingness and capability to mate. Of course, cadets, I don't have to explain you about that! You all know and practice those wonderful courtship rituals such as scale-licking and tail entangling.
-- Although, as good space cadets, we have to abstain from that
-- At least during the training.
-- Maybe just a little, but we try to do our best....
I know, cadets. You are all young males and females, and your life on the spaceship doesn't have to be boring, as long as it doesn't interfere with your training. But let me go back to our naked apes. They have their courtship rituals, and their mating signals. It is a different species, of course, and the signals they send are not understandable for us; not immediately, at least. Just like they wouldn't understand the mating signals we send to each other; for instance the poetic vibration of a forked tongue. So, they have several secondary sexual signals that signal willingness to mate, and one of them is those red lips you see in the young female of the image you see on the screen.
-- But why red lips?
That's a good question, cadet Nahaawnsmll Te Ìuìsrll Txuangì'ite. That had me puzzled for quite a while as I was trying to understand the meaning of that signal. And I couldn't understand it until I met one of the best ape scientists. Someone named Desmond Morris, he lives in a Northern Island on the Western edge of the big continent they call Eurasia. You have to understand that some ape scientist are truly top-class, almost at the level of our scientists. And this Desmond Morris, yes, he was a worthy follower of the other great ape scientist I was telling you about in another lecture, the one called Charles Darwin. Truly, it is too bad that their life span is so short, but Charles Darwin truly deserved the title of honorable, that is Meuiangitan, and the same is true for Meuiangitan Morris. He is now very old and frail -- they rarely live more than one hundred Earth revolutions. Otherwise, I would have invited him to join us in this class. He is one of the few apes whom I could show myself in my true reptilian form. He wasn't shocked, he understood right away who I was. He even understood the scale licking ritual....
Supposing we had reached the stage where the female signalled sexually to the male from behind with a pair of fleshy, hemispherical buttocks (not, incidentally found elsewhere amongst the primates) and a pair of bright red genital lips, or labia. Supposing the male had evolved a ~ owerful sexual responsiveness to these specific signals. upposing that, at this point in evolution, the species became increasingly vertical and frontally orientated in its social contacts. Given this situation, one might very well expect to find some sort of frontal selfmimicry of the type seen in the gelada baboon. Can we, if we look at the frontal regions of the females of our species, see any structures that might possibly be mimics of the ancient genital display of hemispherical buttocks and red labia? The answer stands out as dearly as the female bosom itself. The protuberant, hemispherical breasts of the female must surely be copies of the fleshy buttocks, and the sharply defined red lips around the mouth must be copies of the red labia. (You may recall that, during intense sexual arousal, both the lips of the mouth and the genital labia become swollen and deeper in colour, so that they not only look alike, but 7so change in the same way in sexual excitement.) If the male of our species was already primed to respond sexually to these signals when they emanated posteriorly from the genital region, then he would have a built-in susceptibility to them if they could be reproduced in that form on the front of the female's body. And this, it would seem, is precisely what has happened, with the females carrying a duplicate set of buttocks and labia on their chests and mouths respectively. (The use of lipsticks and brassieres immediately springs to mind, but these must be left until later, when we are dealing with the special sexual techniques of modern civilisation.)
-- Er........
Lectures by Meuianga Mera
That is a delightful read.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't reptiles be more... reptilian, colder, more analytical, less repulsed by variant life-forms, more like research scientists?
ReplyDeleteI also wonder about the trainees being young, and seeming young. Are they hatched on the journey? How does this come to be?
Ah.... well, John, they look like reptiles, but they are not. Mera didn't tell me everything. It seems to be some kind of a well-guarded secret. But, apparently, their mitochondria are hyper-powered by some mechanism which is not the Krebs cycle. Not clear what it is, but it makes them rather emotional individualists.
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