Biologists, they're just like us! They eat, they sleep, and sometimes they spend days on end posting images of animal genitalia to Twitter. Just like us!
#JunkOff, previously the defunct home of a small number of Spanish-language tweets from 2012, has become a thriving garden of animal genitals. It started a couple days ago, when Anne Hilborn, a graduate student in biology at Virginia Tech, was tweeting back and forth with a labmate and with her advisor Marcella J. Kelly. Per Gizmodo's Throb blog, Hilborn added some of her own collection of animal junk photos to the mix, and #JunkOff was born.
Here's how it started, in Zoolander-esque fashion:
Hilborn kicked things off.
Other eager biologists flocked to the hashtag.
Even when there was nothing to see.
Not to be outdone, botanists got in the mix
A Titan Arum even showed up.
Some of the genitalia might be hard to recognize, but rest assured: it's junk.
Over the past couple days the photos have continued to pile up.
But, some mysteries do remain.
The truth is out there.
Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at ethan.chiel@fusion.net