Well, now that you’ve had your happy ending plant teaser opening, it’s time to talk about the poor animals that didn’t do / aren’t doing so well. In Glasgow, Scotland, a skeleton of the biggest fish ever to inhabit the world’s oceans has been put on display: a leedsichthys problematicus – or Big Meg as the fossil has been nicknamed – measuring more than 15 metres in length. That’s even bigger than the recently found fossil of the extinct South American multi-ton guinea pig. Except for being on the wrong continent, those would have been good eating for the lions that are now close to extinction in Africa. Their numbers have fallen by 90 percent during the last 20 years. As a result of hunters killing them to protect livestock, only 23,000 are left, compared to an estimated 200,000 in the early 1980s. Less cute and cuddly but equally photogenic and tragic are the world’s coral reefs. In 1998 a particularly strong El Nino phenomenon warmed the waters of the Indian Ocean and south-east Asia by several degrees Celsius. That killed around 90% of the coral in the region.

The most important information to document about rare animals that may seem destined for extinction (or have only ever been seen dead) is, of course, their sex lives. That’s just what marine biologist Dr Steve O’Shea is trying to do with the never-before-seen-in-the-wild colossal squid. He’s leading a team of scientists from New Zealand that is hoping to use sex to record the first ever images of a live giant squid. As reported by BBC, he thinks the rare female giant squid – like its cousin the cuttlefish – may secrete a sexual scent to attract a mate. “We want to have several cameras suspended in the water column – maybe triggered by some sort of acoustic signal – such that when any animal comes into the range of the camera, the camera turns on.”

Dr. O’Shea epitomizes the sacrifices that scientists (and their families) must endure to further their work. “The freezer bag at home – to my wife’s disgust – is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We’re going to grind all of this up, and we’re going to have this puree coming out from the camera, squirting into the water. Hopefully the male giant squid, absolutely driven into a frenzy, is going to come up and try to mate with the camera. This is the dream – we’re going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid trying to do obscene things with the camera.” Stay tuned, and good luck with this invaluable project, Dr. O’Shea!!!

Other facinating scientific work into animal gonads has been discussed by New Scientist in its recent article, “Fossil reveals world’s oldest genitals.” The discovery of the world’s oldest genitals proves that little has changed over the last 400 million years – at least for daddy-long-legs. Fossils of harvestmen arachnids (Opiliones) have been found by palaeontologists in an ancient rock at Rhynie near Aberdeen in Scotland. Preserved within a male is a penis two-thirds the length of his body. Looks like that great American naturalist Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, a man’s man whose hobby was the U.S. Presidency, had it right when he promulgated his motto “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”