Diane Kelly

A Woman Wore Her Fitbit During Sex and Replicated a Classic Experiment

Redditor noveltysin wore her Fitbit while she had sex, and shared the resulting graph of her heart rate with the world. Check out how well her graph matches the heart rates in Figure 1 of the classic 1956 paper Physiological Responses During Coitus. She doesn’t include foreplay, so start your comparison at “period B” in…

How That Butt-to-Butt Stage of Dog Mating Happens

If you’ve ever watched a pair of dogs have sex, you’ve probably noticed something odd happen partway through the act. At first, the male grips the female’s back and humps away–nothing unusual about it. But then he dismounts and turns to face away from his mate, with his penis still stuck inside her. It’s called…

Finally, an Episode of Masters of Sex That Really Works

Finally, an episode with stories that reflect back on past seasons and incorporate the science that helped make Bill Masters and Gini Johnson interesting enough people in real life to fuel a historical drama about their lives. In fact, most of Bill Masters’ actions in this episode only make sense when you consider his past.…

Psychologists Say That Sexting Can Be Good for You

We know that sexting can ruin political careers or lead to arrests. But as long as both participants are adults, it’s legal, and a study presented last weekend at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association suggests that it may also be part of lots of committed relationships. That might sound obvious, but most…

The Biomotion Lab at Queen’s University in Ontario is running an experiment to figure out what cues people use to tell the sex of a moving figure. You can help! Watch the line-and-dot animations they’ve created, and telling them whether you think each figure is a man or a woman. Update: The videos use Flash,…

The Man Who Invented Corn Flakes Really Really Really Hated Masturbation

We know John H. Kellogg as the man who invented Corn Flakes and unleashed bran-filled diet fads on an unwary 19th century public. But he was also the author of an influential sex education book that was all about the dangers of self-pleasuring. Plain Facts about Sexual Life was first published in 1877, with an…

Some Sexually-Transmitted Microbes Could Make You Healthier

One risk of sexual behavior is catching a disease from a partner. But sex partners trade a lot of other microorganisms as well, and some of them might actually have beneficial effects. Natasha Gilbert, writing for Scientific American, reports on a human virus called GBV-C which seems to improve survival in HIV-positive people. It’s one…

Here is a Cactus Bribing a Bat to Help it Have Sex 

The deep, bell-shaped flowers of the saguaro cactus use a strong melony scent to tell the bats that pollinate them they’re open for business, but they hide the nectar the bats want to lick up deep inside their base. If the bat wants to eat, it has to shove its face into the dozens of…

Women Really Don’t Notice Details About Your Penis

We’ve seen it in study after study: men worry about what their penis looks like. Is it too short? Too long? Too thin? Is the glans too fat? Will that birthmark be a deal breaker? Relax. A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine last month suggests that women don’t really notice those details.…

A Scientist Responds… to The Fly

In our series, A Scientist Responds, we’re dredging up the great and terrible science fiction flicks of days past—and we’re making scientists watch them. Today’s movie: David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the B-movie screamer, The Fly. The scientist: Throb editor and resident biologist, Diane Kelly. The Movie: The Fly The Fly is a story about…

Dashing New Species of Peacock Spider Just Wants to Get Funky

He’s got a bright blue mask, flashy racing stripes, and dance moves he’s ready to use on some lucky lady. Say hello to Maratus personatus, a newly-named species of peacock spider from Western Australia. Like all other known peacock spiders, this blue-faced guy has a distinctive courtship dance. But unlike other peacock spiders, he doesn’t…

Placentas are amazing organs, and we’re learning that they do so much more than simply manage the movement of nutrients and wastes between mother and fetus. In this month’s issue of The Scientist, placenta expert Christopher Coe explains its other roles, including hormonal regulation, iron storage, and immune system training. Contact the author at [email protected].

Vibrators Don’t Have to Look Like Giant Cocks Anymore

A vibrator’s basic job is really quite simple, so long as you’re using it as a sex toy instead of unclenching a charley horse or working out some lower back pain. Vibrators are supposed to rapidly stimulate sexually sensitive sensory neurons. That’s it. They could look like anything. But until recently, they often looked like…

Where’s All the Science, Masters of Sex?

I guess scientific success makes for poor drama, since this week the writers of Masters of Sex have served up a mishmash of pathos that connects not at all with the science that made these people famous. Historically, Human Sexual Response made Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson a hot commodity. The book sold 300,000 copies…

GPS Has Revealed How the Oldest Multicellular Organisms Had Sex

The global positioning system (GPS) can keep you from getting lost, manage air traffic, and track the migration of endangered species. And in a new study published today by Nature, it’s helped paleontologists understand how an organism that’s been extinct for about 540 million years reproduced. Fractofusus is one of the oldest known multicellular organisms,…

Zuck Is Having a Baby, But What About That Adorable Dog?

Congratulations have been pouring in ever since Mark Zuckerberg posted (on Facebook, of course) that he and his wife Priscilla Chan are expecting a daughter in a few months. It’s wonderful and all (mazel tov, you two!), but most people took a look at their photo and wondered, is that a dog—or a mop? Yes,…

Here’s How a 13-Foot Wide Egg Mass Fits Inside a 5-Foot Squid

On July 9th of this year, divers off the coast of Turkey ran across an enormous lump of gelatinous goo which turned out to be one of the largest squid egg masses ever found. That inspired science writer and squid expert Danna Staaf to make this video explaining how all that goo fit inside a…

Ruby App Gets Period Tracking Right

The company that makes the fertility app Glow released a new iOS app called Ruby today, which lets women track their menstrual cycles and sexual health without an obsessive in-your-face focus on pinpointing ovulation. Like its baby-focused cousin Glow, the Ruby app still tells you when you’re in a ‘fertile window’, but its interface is…

Watch These Sea Slugs Stab Each Other in the Head as They Have Sex

Sea slugs are beautiful, jewel-like animals with surprisingly violent mating habits. This tiny unnamed species in the genus Siphopteron is no different. It all looks relatively peaceful at first. There’s a bit of mutual biting when a pair meets up to mate, but it settles down as each slug slips a penis into their opposite…

Not one, not two, but four pelvic floor exercise devices are hitting the market to encourage women to do their Kegels. Rose Eleveth talks to their creators about their mission to help strengthen hidden (but important) muscles and asks whether the process really needs to be gamified. Check out the article at Refinery 29! Contact…