Brave little bushcricket has the world's biggest balls

by Steven Mostyn - Nov 10 2010, 05:03

The next time someone references bravery or bravado by throwing out a verbal nod to testicular volume, spare a thought for the positively heroic cricket, which, despite its modest physical size, officially has the biggest balls on the planet.

Specifically, a new study into insect mating habits has revealed that the tuberous bushcricket (which is a type of katydid) boasts sperm-producing organs that are equal to 14 percent of its entire body mass—the human equivalent of around 10kg (5kg per testicle).

“I was amazed by the size of the testes—they seemed to take up the entire abdomen,” study leader and behavioural ecologist Dr. Karim Vahed told National Geographic.

The research, which looked at 21 different species, also discovered that the larger the testicles the less impressive the ejaculation, leaving the tuberous bushcricket as a fairly poor performer when compared to other fellow bushcrickets equipped with smaller testicles.

“Males with bigger testicles are actually producing smaller amounts of ejaculate,” added Dr. Vahed in a BBC News report. “This very much favours the alternative hypothesis: that it’s about the number of different females the male can fertilise, rather than getting a greater success per female.”

While you might think a gargantuan creature such as the blue whale would perhaps have the world’s most substantial testicles, the tiny bushcricket actually replaces the similarly miniscule fruit fly when it comes to eye-popping testes. The fruit fly (Drosophila bifurca) has testicles equal to 11 percent of its body mass.

The full study, which was conducted by the University of Derby in England, will be published today (November 10) in the science journal Biology Letters.

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