What do you expect as an illustration of rape?
A useful lesson for us all as we consider such things as gender differences in employment, careers chosen, working hours and so many other matters that confuse modern society. Sex differences are about sex. Our example today being how the narwhal got its tusk:
Now a study suggests that the true purpose of these horns has less to do with the supernatural and everything to do with sex.
Researchers collected data on 245 adult male narwhals, which were observed in the waters off Greenland over the course of 35 years. They measured the whales’ bodies, the width of their tails and the length of their tusks.
Roughly speaking, they found that large males had tusks that were even longer than one would expect. This kind of exaggerated growth is known as “hyperallometry” and can be interpreted as a sign that a particular biological feature has evolved as a tool to scare off rival males and to impress females.
As the researchers put it in a study published in the journal Biology Letters: “The information being signalled is simple: ‘I am bigger than you.’”
And so we explain tight fitting t-shirts, codpieces and budgie smugglers.
Sex differences are about sex. We’ll also fake them if we’ve not got them. And thus implodes most grievance studies departments.
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Back in the day (well at least some decades ago when I was still in the procreative competition) cutting off a man's genitalia made him a eunuch, now apparently it magically makes them a woman. And so scientists now are stating the obvious, or what used to be obvious even to a youth sitting a Common Entrance biology exam, animals including narwhals select partners based on physical traits.
And to make them a castrato with a singing voice Like soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto.
Of course it had to be done young.
This study can't be taken seriously unless they asked the supposedly "male" narwhals their preferred pronouns, can it?
So
Was it a male or female narwhal tusk used last November to "confront" the terrorist in London?
Unknown - the tusk had not self-declared.