Serenading the one you love has long been considered one of the most romantic gestures a man can make. But doing so by rubbing your penis against your body must surely be the most romantic thing you can do. An insect called the water boatman has the art down.

French and Scottish scientists have determined that the 2mm “water boatman” produces the loudest sound in nature, compared to it’s body size. It produces a sound level of 100 decibels, that’s like sitting in the front row of an orchestra playing at its loudest.

The way the bug makes this sexy sound is by rubbing its penis against its abdomen is a display called “stridulation”, which insects do all the time when they rub body parts together to produce sounds.

James Windmill of the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow says of the discovery:

We were very surprised. We first thought the sound was coming from larger aquatic species.

When we identified without any doubt the sound source, we spent a lot of time making absolutely sure that our recordings of the sounds were calibrated correctly.

If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth.

Now, I wonder if I can achieve a similar feat…

[Source : BBC]