Earlier today I took this picture. Something has bothered me since: Where is the penis? Do insects have penises? Turns out they do, sort of... (Thread)
The penis of a ladybug dude is called a sipho. Below is an sipho pic of a ladybird by Karol Szawaryn et al.
This means that the ladybirds in my picture are essentially just hugging, as there is no sipho in sight. So while looking for sipho pictures on Google, I quickly realised that insects have really really weird sperm...
For example: the Sperm of the fruit fly (Drosophila) is about 6 centimeters long. Below, an image of a fruit fly and it's sperm cell. WTF!? (Image by S. Lüpold et al, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18005)
So what about ladybug sperm? Well, it looks like it's a bit shorter than that of the fruit fly... (Image: Dias et al)
( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1467803920300098?dgcid=rss_sd_all)
Sperm ultrastructure of three species of ladybirds (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae)

The sperm of three coccinellid species belonging to the subfamilies Chilocorinae, Coccinellinae and Epilachninae were studied under light and transmis…

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1467803920300098?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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