Free Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? by Mark Leyner

time to time and go on a sort of “autopilot.” In fact, sharks may swim in their “sleep,” although it’s not the sort of snoring, drooling, butt-scratching snooze we’re accustomed to.
    WHY DO DOGS WAG THEIR TAILS?
    Most people think that dogs wag their tails only when they’re happy. But it’s a little more complicated than that. Canine tail wagging is a form of communication (dogs don’t usually wag their tails when they’re alone), but it can relate a variety of emotional states, as anyone who’s been bitten by a tail-wagging dog knows full well. The wag can convey good spirits, fear, aggression, dominance, or submission. The well-known zoologist Desmond Morris contends that a dog’s wagging tail expresses a state of conflict—the simultaneous need to advance and retreat. Some have suggested that tail wagging is simply a physiological means of getting rid of surplus energy. P. Dwight Tapp, who’s conducted research at the University of Toronto in the cognitive functions and brain structures of dogs, points out that wagging also spreads pheromones by causing the muscles around the anus to contract, pressing on glands that release a scent. This scent communicates information about sex, age, and social status to other dogs.
    There’s another compelling question about canine behavior: Why don’t dogs, whose loathsome, irresponsible owners leave them tethered to parking meters in dangerously frigid temperatures and then spend several hours leisurely browsing in Walgreens, rip their faces off (or at least viciously maul them) when they finally come out, instead of enthusiastically wagging their tails?
    IS IT TRUE THAT COCKROACHES CAN SURVIVE AN ATOMIC BLAST?
    The poor, loathsome, reviled cockroach, persona non grata wherever it goes, chased from one corner of the earth to the other by brandished shoes and rolled-up magazines…But you gotta give the vermin their due, because, yes, they could probably withstand the radiation in a thermonuclear blast. A human being exposed to radiation in excess of about 800 rems (the “rem” is a dosage of radiation that will cause a specific amount of harm to human tissue) will most likely die. The killer dose for an American cockroach is 67,500 rems. And a German cockroach would need to be nuked with about 100,000 rems to stop it in its tracks!! There’s a simple reason cockroaches (along with other insects) are less vulnerable to radiation than humans—their simplicity. The more complex and longer living an organism is, the more vulnerable it is to the effects of radiation, i.e., the more there is to go wrong. And cockroaches don’t live long enough to develop the cancers associated with radiation exposure.
    Researchers at Stanford University are actually designing and building robots based on cockroaches—not because they’re nuke-proof—but because they’re so speedy and agile. (Some cockroaches can move fifty times their body length in one second. That’s the equivalent of a human being running at about 200 mph!)
    If all this has whetted your intellectual appetite for cockroaches, W. J. Bell’s
The Laboratory Cockroach
is a
must-read.
It includes such essential information as “How to Anesthetize a Cockroach” and, of course, “How to Extract the Sex Pheromone of a Cockroach” (who knows when THAT might come in handy?).
    Cockroaches haven’t evolved much in the millions of years they’ve been around, and they’ll probably be scurrying about for zillions to come. And would you really want to live in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland populated only by mutant Madagascar hissing cockroaches? Probably not. But what if you could hunker down and survive somehow…and you’d be the only human alive…and the cockroaches would worship you as some sort of god? Hmmmmm…
    CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
    Yes they can! According to biologist Bruce Bagemihl, there is documented evidence that some 450 species engage in “gay” and “lesbian” sexual activity, including