Gender-bending bugs take battle of sexes to new heights

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Sexual relationships between humans may be complicated but they are nothing compared to the bizarre sex life of the African bat bug, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue.

Renowned among entomologists for a particularly horrible form of reproduction, these insects have now been found to show "what could be the most extreme form of transexualism yet discovered," it says.

Male bat bugs never use the vagina, instead piercing the female's abdomen and inseminating directly into the blood, where the sperm then swim to the ovaries.

In response to this, female bat bugs have evolved defense mechanism -- they grow a paragenital structure on their abdomen that limits the damage by guiding the male's sharp penile prong into a...