Sexual Eeling | Hacker News Reader

Sexual Eeling

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Do yourself a favor and read about the eel life cycle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eel_life_history

I thought the theory that eels reproduce in the Sargasso Sea was proved false? Now I need to see if I can find the article.

Edit: found it

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/25/where-do-eels-...

Thank you for that. It was a very moving article.

New Yorker articles are nice, but "proved false" is strong for "we've still never seen it" (which is what the article actually says).

> [Freud] had to return to check his results later in the year, he chanced upon a pair of furrowed organs, hidden away in the abdominal cavity, which he identified as the much-sought-after testes of a male. With the two sexes now clearly distinguished, definitive evidence of sexual reproduction had been found; and, after more than 2,000 years, Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation could at last be laid to rest.

Clever title :) One thing I don’t understand: do eels die right after reproducing? Because otherwise some should have had some visible gonads.

We don't know for certain because we've never seen them reproduce. But we do know that their digestive system dissolves as they gain their reproductive organs, meaning that they lose the ability to eat once they have gonads so it seems a fairly robust assumption.

Wow, that’s wild. That makes for one tough game of “would you rather”!

It's not an uncommon pattern. Consider salmon, which travel upriver to spawn then die.

And the female octopus. So intelligent, but after they reproduce they stop eating and die. (Apparently they sometimes eat their mate beforehand, which I didn’t know until now). It seems like such a waste. I count myself lucky that humans don’t follow this pattern!

Clever title :)

...and now I will hear Marvin Gaye singing with a French accent in my head all day.

I wonder if this experience scarred Freud and that's why he attributed most psychological dysfunction to sexual experiences people had as children.

That’s close to what the last paragraph of TFA suggests.

This kinda reminds me second book from Ender franchise

On a related note I can really recommend 'The Gospel of the Eels: A Father, a Son and the World's Most Enigmatic Fish'

https://amzn.to/37YFKcy

> Freud spent the next month dissecting more than 400 specimens

The determination required to produce results. And in something as remote from personal issues as eel reproduction.

Considering we're talking about Freud, I'm not sure we can say "sexual reproduction" to be remote from "personal issues".

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