The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Edwin D. Kilbourne
ekilbourne@snet.net

How the Penguin Keeps Sanguine  
One of the puzzles about……the penguins has  been how they keep their feet from freezing….A New Zealand zoologist believes that he and other scientists have found the answer.  A penguin can rock back on its heels and tail, lifting its feet… off the ice or frigid  ground.

-The New York Times, Feb. 17, 1962

With penguin or human
the rule will prevail
that he with cold feet
will sit back on his tail.

Mating of a Flasher 

With  fireflies, “mating preferences are based…….on the duration of the flash….females responded more ….as the flashes became longer…Males with longer flashes also produced larger spermatophores, the sperm-containing sac that is passed from the male to the female during mating.
-The New York Times, April 22, 2003

Human males who get their jollies
Spreading trench coats at strange dollies
Vanishing, without a trace
Don’t perpetuate the race.
With fireflies, the biggest flashers
Never are condemned as mashers
They’re sought instead, by firefly vamps
Attracted by their milliamps
Who somehow find they can’t ignore
The boy next door’s spermatophore.

Not Exactly Iambic Pentameter
(Sweet Love Divine is not Ovine)

Bighorn rams (Ovis Canadensis canadensis) create mating opportunities with some form of sustained intrasexual aggression of which territorial and harem defense are examples. In contrast, males that use diverse alternative strategy are often depicted as opportunists taking advantage of mating chances provided by various extrinsic causes such as a territorial dispute that leaves females unguarded.
-Science, August 3, 1984

Let me tell you how it is with Ovis Canadensis canadensis
and of his efforts to conceive and consequently up the census.
In order that he keep his ewes in his possession
He will create mating opportunities with some form of aggression.
His wooly wooing is neither smooth nor is it unctuous,
And therefore can be fairly termed, “rambunctious”.
He will take from those that have to make them his’n.
Which in the interest of rhyme can be called a ewephemism.

Published: October 11, 2004