A successful male is a dead male

So Mark's doing the evening news meeting by reading snippets to me from the New York Times science page. One story is all about swarming as an animal behavior, another is about bee behavior (inspired by the stupid Seinfeld bee movie). Natalie Angier, science writer extraordinaire, informs that the mating queen bee has one mating flight in life, and dozens of would-be mates fling themselves at her during this flight. The males that succefully mate with her are rewarded with a nasty suprise: Their penises snap off and they die. "A successful male," she writes, and Mark reads, "Is a dead male."

Wow, I say. One crazy flight, that chick bee flings her self out in to the world and screws everything she sees. Imagine if people were like that, I say.

"That's called college," Mark says.

I can't add to that, really.