The year was 1979 and Jonathan Waage, an entomologist from Brown University, quietly published his succinct observations on the sperm-scooping, as opposed to delivering, talents of the damselfly penis. Brown demonstrated that the rows of stiff backwards-facing hairs at the tip of the phallus enabled the male to spring-clean the female’s reproductive tract, removing any lingering sperm left by rival males that might compete with its own.
