More Shell Shock : Beyond ‘Sex and the Single Snail’ Are Scandalous Tales of Tide-Pool Orgies

RECENTLY, IN complaining about telephone sales pitches, I remarked that I often got calls from some publisher in Washington asking if I wanted to subscribe to a new series of “beautifully illustrated books on the sex life of the snail, or whatever.”

As many of my innocent remarks do, this elicited a cry of pain from an unexpected source. Selma Raskin complained that she and Jean M. Cate had just published “It’s Easy to Say Crepidula: A Phonetic Guide to Pronunciation of the Scientific Names of Seashells and a Glossary of Terms Frequently Used in Malacology.”

Raskin wrote that she and Cate realized that their little book had no hope of a wide readership and that they had been thinking of writing something with more appeal.

“The only books that make best-seller lists these days have something to do with sex,” she said. “So we have been considering doing a book on the sex life of mollusks. Your line about such a book has saved us hours of time, work and a considerable amount of money.”

However, she sighed, they were a little sad about giving up on their project. “We had such a good title for it: ‘Sex and the Single Snail.’ ”

By one of those coincidences that so often occur in the literary world, especially in the publication of scientific papers (note that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace almost simultaneously developed the theory of evolution), Hans Bertsch of Redondo Beach, a marine biologist, has published a paper called “Sea Slug Sex.”

Bertsch has sent me a copy of the article in Environment Southwest, a publication of San Diego’s Natural History Museum. Bertsch notes that he helped those “dear ladies” (Raskin and Cate) in the final editing of their book.

In the tradition of Robert Benchley’s famous essay on “The Social Life of the Newt,” Bertsch’s essay, while clothed in scientific terms, offers some inescapable insights into the nature of sex in human beings. As Benchley wrote: “In studying the newt life, one is chiefly impressed with the methods by which the males force their attentions upon the females, with matrimony as an object. . . .”

Surprisingly, sea slugs have reached a state of sexual development far beyond that of Homo sapiens , since they are what Bertsch calls “simultaneous hermaphrodites, each being equipped with both male and female genitalia.”

The first fear that this phenomenon inspires is that this creature might easily copulate with itself and thus produce a one-parent offspring, which, according to the taboos of our culture, would certainly not do.

But Bertsch quickly reassures us:

“The genitalia have become highly modified to prevent self-fertilization and to allow reciprocal, simultaneous copulation (without getting one’s own or the other’s sperm or eggs confused).” Any sea slug, he explains, can function either as a male or a female, both giving and receiving sperm.

Certain species of sea slug, he observes, actually engage in pre-coital “touching,” which, he says, “may represent special recognition or determination of the biological readiness of a possible partner.”

Thus, we find that the lowly sea slug practices a sophisticated ritual that, among humans, is called foreplay.

It is interesting to note that the sex organs of the sea slug are located on the right sides of their bodies; to accomplish copulation, they must lie side by side in opposite directions. Again, this shows a degree of sophistication that one might not have expected in sea slugs. “Copulation may be brief,” Bertsch says, “or last several hours.”

Even more astonishing than the one-on-one sexual practices of the sea slug is its evident delight in orgies. Bertsch observes that sea hares often engage in a form of group sexual activity called chain copulation. He says up to a dozen have been observed engaged in such rituals.

It is not surprising to find that two local species ( Aplysia californica and Aplysia vaccaria ) have often been observed in this wanton group behavior in the tide pools of Cabrillo National Monument or in shallow, rocky pools off Point Loma. This does nothing to absolve Southern California of its reputation for lax, hot-tub sexual morals.

I await “Sex and the Single Snail” with undisguised excitement.