New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020
nypost.com
POSTSCRIPT Books
Is there anyone better than Dolly
Parton? The answer is no. Her new
book, “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My
Life in Lyrics” (Chronicle Books), out
Nov. 17, written with Nashville-
based music journalist Robert K.
Oermann, takes the reader on a de-
lightful journey of all things Dolly,
from her first song “Little Tiny Tas-
seltop,” about a corncob doll, that
she penned as a girl (“Little tiny tas-
seltop, you’re the only friend I’ve
got”) to her career, relationships,passions, literacy work and more.
“I have often said that songs are
my children and that I expect them
to support me when I’m old,” she
writes. “Well, I am old, and they are!”
The book is filled with lyrics and
little photographic gems, such as a
picture of a colorful coat, lovingly
handmade by her mother. “My mom
made me this little coat,” she writes.
“In order to make me proud of that
little coat, I know now, she told me
the story about Joseph from the Bi-ble and his coat of many colors. So I
thought, ‘Well, if it’s from the Bible,
and Joseph was an important per-
son, it has to be very special and im-
portant.’ ”
The kids at school made fun of her.
“I was trying to tell them in my own
way, ‘It ain’t about golden riches.
You can be rich in love. In all sorts of
wonderful things, you can be rich.’ ”
The book itself is rich in biographi-
cal details from Parton’s life and ca-
reer, a gorgeous tribute to a lifetimeof music and
storytelling.
“I never shied
away from any
topic, whether
it was suicide or
prostitution or
women’s rights
or whatever,”
she writes. “I was always like that
and still am. Whatever it is, I can say
it in a song, in my own way.”
— Mackenzie DawsonBUZZ BOOK: A lifetime of lyrical storytelling from Dolly
by REED TUCKER
T
he history of the
penis goes back
at least 425 mil-
lion years to the
Paleozoic era.
The first known,
in the fossil record at least, showed up
on a 5-millimeter-long crablike crusta-
cean sporting a “large and stout copula-
tory organ.” The appendage impressed
scientists enough to name the creature
Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which
means “amazing swimmer with a large
penis.”
Since then, all manner of penises have
appeared on animals (and in Zoom calls)
— some practical, some ingenious and
some downright strange.
For a thorough stroll through this
portion of the biological world, there’s
“Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Ani-
mal Penis” (Avery), out now, by science
writer Emily Willingham.
First, how to even define a penis? The
author narrows it down to “something
that inserts into a partner’s genitalia
during copulation and transmits ga-
metes.”
It’s a broad definition, because the
variation in the animal world is stag-
gering.
Take millipedes for starters. The ar-
thropods get it on with a specializedBlue whale or barnacle...
Which
has a
weenier
willy?
(The answer may surprise you.)
Blue whales are the largest
animals known to man, with an
average penis length of 8 feet,
while the teeny barnacle (inset)
can boast a phallus (indicated with
arrow) eight times its body length.Alamy; Marjan Barazandeh, et al. Proc. R. Soc. B.pair of legs located on their seventh
body segment. Another pair of legs lo-
cated close to the head loads them with
sperm, and off they go.
The Japanese yellow swallowtail but-
terfly has photoreceptors on its genita-
lia. In other words, it can see with its
penis. The “eyes” seem to help “guide
[the male] to the right place for copula-
tion.”
Forget romance. Some creatures
blindly stab their mate with their penis
“like bad fencers” in an attempt to inject
sperm. Sea slugs will nail their chosen
one in the foot or even the forehead.
It’s an oddly effective way to make ba-
bies, because the female body is a “sur-
prisingly benign environment for
sperm.” In fact, research has shown that
injecting sperm into the body cavities
of pigs, cattle and chickens gets results
“just as good as what’s achieved with
putting semen into the usual
place.”
What about the biggest
penis? That belongs to the
blue whale, with an average
length of 8 feet. Though the
whale has nothing on the
barnacle. “Some barnacles
can boast a phallus eight
times the length of their
owners,” the author writes.
If a barnacle were the same
size as the blue whale, itspenis would clock in at 640 feet.
Don’t mess with the Yangtze gi-
ant softshell turtle, which uses its penis
as a weapon. Might want to steer clear
of crocodilians, as well. The animals
have permanently stiff penises that
“can just pop out, like an airbag.”
A rodent known as the East African
springhare has a penis like a “medieval
battle device.” It’s got spines, an internal
bone and an inflatable tip which it uses
like a battering ram against the female’s
cervix. Llamas and alpacas have cork-
screw-shaped penises that help them
couple with the female.
Perhaps most tragic is the honeybee,
who, like a nerdy teenager, is literally
willing to die for sex. The honeybee has
a tiny penis that can only be seen under
a microscope, but it packs a punch. After
the male couples with the queen, “the
ballistic emergence of his semen forces
him back,” basically ripping
off his penis and killing him.
But, unlike all of these
other animals, Willingham
says, human genitals aren’t
the most important organs
when it comes to copula-
tion.
Rather, she writes, it’s the
human mind that “deserves
to be re-centered as the
most fundamental element
of our sexual behaviors.”