Weird research
Sep. 14th, 2003 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13So I'm reading this rather entertaining book called "Body Heat: Temperature and life on Earth" by Mark S. Blumberg about all the ways living things use, generate conserve and dissapate heat. Really interesting stuff.
Then I get to the following sentence:
"A special chamber was constructed that allowed the investigators to manipulate the temperature of a ram's scrotum."
::blinks::
Now scrotal temperature is important because hot sperm are dead sperm. And the results of the experiment are really interesting too. Turns out a hot-scrotumed ram will start panting to lower its temperature. But since the scrotum is continually heated, it stays warm. The ram will continue panting until it's own body temp has decreased more that 4 degrees F! As the anecdote concludes: "It appears that the ram is more committed to maintaining the temperature of its testes than to maintaining its deep body temperature."
Fascinating, but I still can't help thinking of the poor grant comittee supervising this research.
"You want to do what?"
"Heat sheep balls. I've got the blueprints right here."
Then I get to the following sentence:
"A special chamber was constructed that allowed the investigators to manipulate the temperature of a ram's scrotum."
::blinks::
Now scrotal temperature is important because hot sperm are dead sperm. And the results of the experiment are really interesting too. Turns out a hot-scrotumed ram will start panting to lower its temperature. But since the scrotum is continually heated, it stays warm. The ram will continue panting until it's own body temp has decreased more that 4 degrees F! As the anecdote concludes: "It appears that the ram is more committed to maintaining the temperature of its testes than to maintaining its deep body temperature."
Fascinating, but I still can't help thinking of the poor grant comittee supervising this research.
"You want to do what?"
"Heat sheep balls. I've got the blueprints right here."
