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President of NOM Tries to Capitalize on Shooting Incident, Demands Free Pass on Hate

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus8/15/2012 9:27:46 pm PDT

Since we are talking of sex… and figs… here’s something you can file under “little things I didn’t really need to know”:

Fig reproduction is complicated, and each fig species depends upon a particular wasp to pollinate it.

The fig fruit is sort of turned inside out - think of a small change purse that you can flip inside out - with the flowers appearing “inside”. That’s why there is a little hole on the end of the fruit.

The female wasp climbs through the hole when the fruit is small and green, lays eggs, then goes and flies away or is finished. Later her children emerge, the boys mate with the girls, the girls fly away, and boys die, inside the fig.

Thus, when you eat a ripe fig, you very well may be eating little insect parts. Now, some will tell you that the fig plant “absorbs” the insect parts… but that is a little bit of a lie. Bacteria and fungi very well may breakdown parts of body, and the end products used by the plant, but there usually isn’t much time between when the little guys come out to mate and when the fig fruit turns ripe and is eaten.