hello from the other side!
it is 2021, change is afoot, and i am somewhere else!
tl;dr - we escaped ontario just before it went back into lockdown, and are spending the winter in a small beach town in costa rica with my uncle and cousin who have lived here forever, which is a very special and lucky thing. we are happy to be here.
now, onto today’s needsletter.
there are a bunch of trees on & next to our property where the local howler monkeys live. palm trees, mango trees, and something called a guanacaste tree. the monkeys also have their very own lil’ monkey bridges so they can get to and fro safely. here’s a photo of some of the trees.
the other day, the monkeys took a detour and decided to check out the house. while they were scoping it out & we were scoping THEM out, i noticed something.
zoom. enhance.
…look at this monkey’s balls. look at how LOW they dangle! look at (paraphrasing my friend aaron here) how gingerly they are placed upon the roof tiles.
you can kind of get the gist here - unfortunately i don’t have a proper photo of the ball sack in action, but believe me when i say: these balls hang dangerously low. lower than any ball sack has the business of hanging, in my opinion. and they’re bright white! this is the silliest looking ball sack i’ve ever seen (and i’ve seen a totally regular amount of ball sacks)!
i couldn’t help but wonder: is there a reason why the male howler monkey’s ball sack is SO long and just….out there? all i can think about is this poor monkey getting his balls stuck between a twig or branch. imagine the pain of a splinter there? what if got impaled?! surely nature has a reason for putting these so in the way?
i threw this out to instagram and got some answers. apparently, the balls hang low mainly for reproductive reasons. these monkeys don’t want their balls to get too hot & kill sperms, but ALSO they want to attract a mate with their low hanging fruits, basically! i also learned that different monkeys have all sorts of different ball sacks - some are bright blue! look at these ones!
ANYWAY, i wanted to find a good picture of howler monkey balls for this newsletter, so i started googling, but all of the images i got were ones like this:
not a ball in sight, but loads of photos of monkeys-a-howling! and here is why:
howler monkeys are some of the loudest mammals on earth (they are very loud). the quality of their howl is dependent on a U-shaped bone in their throat called the hyoid. the bigger the hyoid, the deeper the call. and back in 2015, some scientists at cambridge discovered that the deeper the call…the smaller the balls. so there’s an anatomical trade off! how are the male monkeys with smaller hyoids supposed to compete with their louder male counterparts? giant balls. you can have one or the other, but you cannot have both.
which is hilarious to me! also hilarious? all these headlines.
so here’s the deal: the male monkeys that live in smaller groups can fend off other males by howling real loud & scaring the males off, and even though they have tiny balls, they have access to the females around them to mate. but in larger groups, the males who have to compete for females do so via their testes. apparently they participate in the phenomenon most hideously named “sperm competition” - they make the most & strongest sperm possible, which makes their balls huge, which increases their chances to impregnate the females because they have the best sperms.
based on the balls that i’ve seen around these parts: who’s fuckin tonight? my local howler monkeys, apparently!
and that’s that on that! monkey ball mystery solved.
thanks for reading & see you next week,
kt