Bara Bara Bara Bara Bara Bara Bara Bara Bat Balls!

I started reading about the inverse correlation between a bat’s intelligence, I assume as being measured by the size of his brain, and the size of his testicles, I assume as being measured by the size of his testicles. Other than the obvious need for a study like this, 

for those of you who would actually like to think beyond the need for and the utility of this type of information, a correlation depicts a relationship between two variables, in this case the size of brain and the size of testicles. An inverse correlation indicates that as one variable increases, the other decreases. The clever bats have wee balls. Stupid bats have big balls.

 

We can let x=brain and y=testicle

rbraintesticle = all that stuff with some standard deviations which finally becomes:

 

There is obviously some sexiness involved and afterwards the wee flying fox with either big balls or a big brain has to get some rest. This whole thing is taken away from one which, in and of itself, speaks volumes about the amount of time and energy one has to spend to do this stuff. Now I could find you actual pictures of bat balls, but dignity and decorum prohibits me from doing so.

Instead, I draw your attention to another story:

WOODSIDE, Calif. —  Two former caretakers who refused to bare their breasts to the 300-pound, sign-language-speaking gorilla named Koko have settled a lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation.

Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller claimed they were fired after they refused to expose their bosoms to the primate, and after reporting sanitary problems at Koko's home in Woodside, an upscale town south of San Francisco. The pair claimed they were threatened that if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish, their employment with the Gorilla Foundation would suffer," the lawsuit alleged. Alperin and Keller claimed that Francine "Penny" Patterson, the gorilla's longtime caretaker and president of the Gorilla Foundation, pressured them to expose their breasts as a way to bond with the 33-year-old female simian. "On one such occasion," the lawsuit said, "Patterson said, 'Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples.'" The plaintiffs, both in their mid-40s, never undressed, said their attorney, Stephen Sommers. The foundation has denied the allegations. Lawyers for both sides refused to disclose terms of the settlement. A second similar lawsuit filed by another employee is pending. The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of gorillas. It's best known for Koko, who has mastered a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs.

I got nothing on this one, other than amazement, so back to the bat. Hell, who am I kidding:

 

How clever do you think this wee bat is and what about the size of the bat’s bat you may wonder. Well wonder no more:

The mammalian os penis or baculum is an extremely diverse bone but our understanding of the selective forces behind this diversity remains poor. While genital morphology is generally assumed to be sexually selected, there have been relatively few attempts to test this hypothesis. Here we investigate associations between baculum length and two measures of sexual selection intensity (mating system and testis mass) across bats. Analyses were conducted using both species-level data and phylogenetic comparative techniques. Controlling for the effect of male body mass, baculum length was positively associated with relative testis mass in all cross-species analyses. Additionally, in an analysis that also included mating system, there was an interaction between testis mass, body mass and mating system that significantly influenced baculum length. However, after using independent contrasts to control for phylogenetic inertia in these data, baculum length was not significantly associated with mating system, testis mass or body mass. Thus, increased length of the baculum in bats appears not to be associated with increased sperm competition risk or sexual selection intensity.

Comments

[howe]

Is this species related to the rattatatatatatata bird whose body weighs three pounds and carries a scrotum that weighs ten pounds.....so that when he lands on his nesting site of corrugated roofs in Identreroas.....the noise that describes the landing.