If you wanted any further proof that the definition of “perversion” is conditioned by any number of contingent factors (time, place, species, etc), you might consider the case of Bdelloidea, microscopic aquatic creatures. One of the most popular articles of the year over at Discover describes the strange lives of these tiny animals. Not only do these “minuscule, transparent animals routinely survive periods of complete dessication that can last from days to years,” they also consist entirely of females. How do they reproduce? Scientists have long known that they utilize a form of asexual reproduction known as parthenogenesis. There are some twists to the process, though. For example, the rotifers scarf up DNA from other plants and animals as well.

… upon patching up their own DNA, the bdelloids simultaneously incorporate random scraps of DNA from other organisms. This so-called horizontal gene transfer is extremely rare among animals, and in the bdelloids’ case can include DNA from almost anything that was in their soupy habitat at the time things dried up, including whatever they just ate. In only 1 percent of the bdelloid genome, Meselson found dozens of foreign genes from bacteria, plants, and fungi inserted among the native nucleotides.

You read that correctly. The organisms can absorb DNA from their own food products. That would be like going to a fast-food restaurant and picking up some DNA from a hamburger. Or would it be more like going to a fast-food restaurant and picking up some DNA from the toilet? The article isn’t quite clear on this point, but if the creature is vacuuming up DNA from anything in its soupy environment, this would seem to include waste products.

Even more astonishingly, the rotifers also pick up DNA from the corpses of fellow rotifers.

It’s likely, he says, that during recovery from dessication, bdelloids pick up genes from members of their own species, too — dead members, that is, whose genes spill out of ruptured cell membranes. That process would provide the kind of genetic reshuffling that other animals achieve through sexual reproduction. “It may be their form of sex,” Meselson says. “But their partner is essentially dead. So you’d have to call it necrophilia. Actually, since they’re all females, lesbian necrophilia.”

What makes this especially interesting is that perversion is customarily defined by its sterility. An act is considered perverse, according to this view, when leads to spilled seed rather than to baby-making. That’s why traditionally masturbation and homosexuality were considered perverse. They occurred outside the baby-making context of man and wife. In the case of these rotifers, however, it is precisely a “sterile” act — necrophilia — which has become a means of perpetuating the species. It practically makes you fantasize about some post-apocalyptic scenario such as a sci-fi novel might present. If a nuclear bomb killed all the men in the world, would women find a way to vary their DNA by rubbing up against the cadavers?

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