[Editor's Note: John Dooley is on vacation this week, so please enjoy this rather disgusting column from the Scientific World archives.]

Recently, while most of the nation toiled aimlessly at their day jobs, I was recreating myself by reading a report from New Scientist magazine about bug genitalia. Specifically: insect penises. Bug dicks. As you may know, New Scientist magazine is required reading for any home scientist interested in insect genitalia (as well as other non-genital related items of interest to the scientific community).

Of course, the venerated publication doesn't use the phrase "bug dicks." In New Scientist magazine, bug dicks are called intromittent organs. According to the report, bug dicks literally come in all shapes and sizes: "Wherever you look in nature, from worms to mammals, you can find intromittent organs doing fair impressions of toothbrushes, nail files, and other household objects." These guys know their dicks!

Two of the stand-out bug dicks mentioned were those of the European Rabbit Flea and the common cockroach. The report reveals that the intromittent organs of the cockroach "have an articulated cluster of moving parts that resemble a Swiss Army knife."

As for our strangely hung friend, the flea: "The European Rabbit Flea may be an obscure beast, but it does have one claim to fame: The male is widely regarded as having the most complicated genitals in the world. These are adorned with springs, levers, hooks, barbs, and all sorts of twiddly bits. Here is a precision instrument that seems better suited to telling the time than depositing sperm." I couldn't have said it better myself. Or maybe I can: Flea dick takes a licking and keeps on ticking!

It is a good thing humanoid-type races never evolved from insects to our level of sophistication. The thought of a cross-race sexual encounter with an insect of any gender makes my own intromittent organs want to flee from under my lab coat in panic and run to hide in the relative safety of the vacuum of outer space.

Take the dragonfly. I don't know what their women are packing down there, but the males have "barbed whips at the tip of their penis" and "ominous-looking appendages, equipped with horns, that can be inflated to several times their normal size." I believe I read a similar statement on the side of my penis enlargement cream.