How do male and female dolphin genitalia fit together during copulation?

Methods

Summary

For those of you familiar with CT scanning techniques and looking for a bit more details about our methods, the penises will be mechanically inflated and formalin-fixed to maintain rigidity while the female reproductive tracts will remain flaccid. The penis and vagina will be coated with an iodinated contrast. The vagina will be CT scanned in transverse plane with the inflated penis inserted. The scans will occur in a cranial to caudal direction using a high resolution, multi-detector, 40 slice helical scanner. Resulting images will be reconstructed in transverse and sagittal planes. We have validated our methods of inflating the penis and of detecting vaginal landmarks on CT scan images.