"There are so many things I love about this study. Giant sperm. Sperm cannons. Beautiful pictures of sperm cannons. And the best part? All specimens for this study were collected from a flooded flower pot on the campus where the scientists worked. A flower pot. Man I wish I could get specimens like that. My jealousy has no bounds. So, Pseudocandona marchica is a VERY small microscopic organism that...lives in flower pots, apparently. And it has giant sperm, long filamentous cells much longer than the P. marchica (can I call you P. chica?) itself. Giant sperm that it has to get OUT of its tiny little body somehow. But how? Well, studies of the organism had long noticed a particular body part on this creature. You see that spirally thing up there in the photo? The bit that's circled? That is Zenker's Organ (so called after the dude who named it. Again, I'm jealous. If anyone ever wants to name an organism's copulatory machinery after me, I would be nothing short of honored. Biologists, take note). They knew it had something to do with reproduction (the first person, in a burst of awesome, called it “Ejakulationsapparat”), but no one was quite sure how it worked. It appeared to be an ejaculatory apparatus, but no one knew quite how." - John (bird whisperer) from Bookmarklet

"But what caused the opening? After all, the smooth muscle runs up and down the length, there's NO muscle in the cogwheel shape at the tip...and the cogwheel itself is closed. So how does the cogwheel shape open? The authors performed various models, and concluded that it's not muscle that opens the tip of the tube. It's pressure. The pressure from the giant sperm opens the tip of the cogwheel, allowing one sperm through at a time to head over toward the chosen lady. Once the one sperm is through, the smooth muscle along the sides of the tubes contracts to help propel it out into the world. Like a very slow cannon. Which is why I'm calling it the sperm cannon, though it's technically the "ejaculatory apparatus". And this is pretty different. Most animals like this have smooth muscle around the base of the ejaculatory organ, where the cogwheel is, which can contract to open the duct. But not P. chica. It needed another method. A pressure method. And with this method the giant sperm can move, one at a time in what I would like to think is a stately procession, down the tube and out toward the female, propelled by pressure and by smooth muscle contractions. So HOW do you ejaculate a giant sperm? Slowly, man, slowly. " - John (bird whisperer)