Galapagos Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Most people do not spend much time thinking about the diversity of genital design that has evolved. This thread is here to try and remedy this deficiency. Spiny ant eaters have a four headed penis on which only two of the heads are actually functional during ejaculation: YouTube - Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals bizarre penis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3o2Q-YLPw The Ant Eaters switch between the two active heads with every copulation for reasons not yet fully understood. More here: Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals bizarre penis - life - 26 October 2007 - New Scientist Another impressive mammalian member is the modified clitoral pseudopenis of the spotted hyena. The female pseudopenis is distinguishable from the male penis only by the shape of the head, and is even capable of maintaining an erection.Photo of a female spotted hyena's pseudopenis:The pseudopenis is still functional in urination and is also traversed by the birth canal. Unlike mammals, most male birds do not have a penis. Fertilization takes place externally, females often storing sperm in special storage tubules for meting out at a later date. Red-Billed Buffalo Weavers are unique in that males have evolved a "phalloid organ" that is actually used in sexual stimulation that climaxes in something akin to an orgasm: Access : Birds feel the rub : Nature News"These birds would be at it for 10-20 minutes," says ecologist Tim Birkheadof the red-billed buffalo weaver and its remarkable false phallus. A maleuses his organ to rub females up the right way and improve his sperm'schance of success1. By massaging his member the male also reaches whatlooks like an orgasm - a first in the bird world.open access continuation of article Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemit Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Most people do not spend much time thinking about the diversity of genital design that has evolved. This thread is here to try and remedy this deficiency. You're joking, right? The people I know, both male and female, spend most of their time thinking about genitalia. The diversity part is generally in the civil rights sense of the word, but the interest in diversity is definitely there. As for the cross-species sense of the word, if I answered a quarter of my email, I could learn a great deal about that, according to the titles I delete all the time. You might check the interest Moontanman has been showing in primary and secondary sexual characteristics the last few weeks. But for your (presumably) non-perverted purposes, you might want to get hogs out of the way quickly. That's a good way of sorting out your audience. --lemit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeztar Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 lemit, you crack me up! :) Galapagos, awesome topic! I had no idea about this unique phenomenon. I hope to add stuff as I find it, but in the meantime a close eye will be kept on this thread. :hihi: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Lemit, I am going to find where you live, :) Yes sex is interesting, it always draws a few scattered nervous laughs at the very least. Sex is probably the most controversial subject anyone can discuss, it both attracts and repels people at once. Sex is probably the most important part of our society, can you imagine how different our society would be if we reproduced with out sex? As far as penis's. One of the best documentaries I ever saw was about mating whales, it was narrated by Loretta Swift (Hot Lips Hollahand :hihi: ) and listening to her describe the six foot whale penis and how it was used by the whales in their courtship was worth the price of admission for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galapagos Posted June 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Lemit, I am going to find where you live, :) Yes sex is interesting, it always draws a few scattered nervous laughs at the very least. Sex is probably the most controversial subject anyone can discuss, it both attracts and repels people at once. Sex is probably the most important part of our society, can you imagine how different our society would be if we reproduced with out sex? As far as penis's. One of the best documentaries I ever saw was about mating whales, it was narrated by Loretta Swift (Hot Lips Hollahand :hihi: ) and listening to her describe the six foot whale penis and how it was used by the whales in their courtship was worth the price of admission for sure! Heh, slightly off topic post, but check out the first google result those of us curious enough are met with when searching "whale penis" :The Church of the Whale PenisTHE CHURCH OF THE WHALE PENISWhale Penis: Who We AreThe Church of the Whale Penis is a group of people that merely want to be the number one Google site for "Whale Penis." Yes, we're serious. No, really. :eek:Interested parties may inquire within the above link for a glimpse of what appears to be the penis of an Orca whale, which I'm guessing measures at least 4 feet... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galapagos Posted June 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 You're joking, right? The people I know, both male and female, spend most of their time thinking about genitalia. The diversity part is generally in the civil rights sense of the word, but the interest in diversity is definitely there. As for the cross-species sense of the word, if I answered a quarter of my email, I could learn a great deal about that, according to the titles I delete all the time.Can't say I didn't see this one coming :) I'm trying to expand some reader's genital horizons. Who knows, maybe someone will spot something in here they really, really like, but would have never seen otherwise :hihi::eek: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galapagos Posted June 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 This one is bizarre. The Argentine blue-billed duck: http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/~kevin_mccracken/reprints/nature-413-128.pdfThis small duck (which typically weighs around 640 g) was previously reported to have a 20 cm penis, which is about half the drake's total body length and is comparible to the penis of an ostrich(Struthio camelus). A new voucher specimen from Argentina's Cordoba pronvince(Fig 1) indicates, however, tha tthe penis size of this species was underestimated. We measured the length of the unwound, everted penis of an aroused O. vittata drake and found that it was 32.5 cm long when hanging under the force of gravity, but could stretch when fully unwound to 42.5 cm. One explanation for the evolution of such a long penis is competitive advantage -- for instance, groups of drakes might display their everted penises to attract females. Success in sperm competition may also be a factor. The base of the lake-duck penis is covered with spines, yet the tip is soft and brush-like. Before ejaculation, drakes probably use the penises like bottle-brushes to remove sperm stored in the oviduct by the female's previous consort. The larger the bottle brush, the more effective it will be, clearing way for the drake to father ducklings. According to one paper, water-bound reproduction may in part account for this extraordinary extremity: http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/~kevin_mccracken/reprints/auk-117-820.pdfThe presence of a well-developed penis in many dabbling and diving ducks may derive in part from their tendency to copulate in the water (Lake 1981). Geese, which tend to copulate on land, typically possess much smaller penises, even though their overall body size is larger (Coker 1998). Another probable, but not necessarily exclusive, explanation is that large ornamented penises have evolved in response to sperm competition within the female reproductive tract, such that males with larger penises achieve greater reproductive success than others (Waage 1979, Thornhill and Alcock 1983, Eberhard 1985). Species that experience greater sperm competition are expected to possess larger penes that may increase the probability of successful fertilization (Birkhead and Møller 1992, Briskie andMontgomerie 1997) Trying to formulate an apt pun, but it seems the muses have forsaken me... just pretend this spot was filled with a hilarious duck pun :shrug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 i was raised on a farm that had about 200 ducks all the time used to harvest down and eggs. We also had chickens, chicken have little or no penis, ducks have large penis's. I have seen many a Drake mate with a chicken, the chicken seems to be upset by the attention...... when I was a kid I always look to see if the chicken ever had chicks with duck beaks or feet but it never happened! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted June 30, 2009 Report Share Posted June 30, 2009 Heh, slightly off topic post, but check out the first google result those of us curious enough are met with when searching "whale penis" : :shrug:Interested parties may inquire within the above link for a glimpse of what appears to be the penis of an Orca whale, which I'm guessing measures at least 4 feet... LMAO ROTFL, I guess worshiping a whale penis is as good as anything else...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enorbet2 Posted July 1, 2009 Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 I was going to say to Moontanman that ducks and chickens cannot likely produce offspring since Nature seems to go to great lengths to prevent interspecies dalliance but after seeing that Drake picture I suspect he can do whatever he wants, except produce offspring. Of course one of the natural laws seems that even if an offspring occurs they will likely be sterile like Mules (from horses and donkeys) and Ligers (from Lion and Tiger) and rarely happen in nature anyway but rather only by artificial insemination. There was an interesting show on The Science Channel about a supposed "Humanzee" suspected of being a human chimp hybrid. That turned out to be false but his DNA was very abnormal but I forget exactly in what way or if anyone has ideas how it got that way. It was further interesting that the so-called Humanzee smelled differently and chimps would stay away and/or ostracize him. That didn't bother him since he preferred human company. He had to be tracked down since he was sold by his original owners for bending over and mounting the wife of the team. I've often wondered why it is so common that species will even attempt what is doomed to failure given what seems to be hard-wiring to prevent success. Galapagos, I am also some interested in how evolution seems to change testicle size in species where females receive multiple males during one estris. As I understand it there are many mechanisms for Alpha males to minimize the possibility of competing males and maximize their own but testicle size and ejaculate volume seem to be a common result, or so I've read. Any input or expansion on that if it isn't too tangential to the errr main thrust of the thread? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galapagos Posted July 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 I was going to say to Moontanman that ducks and chickens cannot likely produce offspring since Nature seems to go to great lengths to prevent interspecies dalliance but after seeing that Drake picture I suspect he can do whatever he wants, except produce offspring. Of course one of the natural laws seems that even if an offspring occurs they will likely be sterile like Mules (from horses and donkeys) and Ligers (from Lion and Tiger) and rarely happen in nature anyway but rather only by artificial insemination. Here is a deep dark secret(not really though) of evolutionary biology: there isn't a good single definition of species. One common species concept related to your comments above is the Biological Species Concept(BSC), whereby species are defined as those individuals who freely produce viable, fertile offspring in their natural environment. Speciation through hybridization(often allopolyploidy) occurs most frequently in plants(many plants can reproduce asexually, and thus reproduce despite having a number of chromosomes incompatible with individuals from the parent population), but you are correct that in general is still rare as most hybrids are sterile. There was an interesting show on The Science Channel about a supposed "Humanzee" suspected of being a human chimp hybrid. That turned out to be false but his DNA was very abnormal but I forget exactly in what way or if anyone has ideas how it got that way. It was further interesting that the so-called Humanzee smelled differently and chimps would stay away and/or ostracize him. That didn't bother him since he preferred human company. He had to be tracked down since he was sold by his original owners for bending over and mounting the wife of the team. I've often wondered why it is so common that species will even attempt what is doomed to failure given what seems to be hard-wiring to prevent success. There is actually a wiki page on the idea of a Humanzee, and a special subsection leading to another page about the chimp(called Oliver) from the documentary mentioned above: Humanzee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Galapagos, I am also some interested in how evolution seems to change testicle size in species where females receive multiple males during one estris. As I understand it there are many mechanisms for Alpha males to minimize the possibility of competing males and maximize their own but testicle size and ejaculate volume seem to be a common result, or so I've read. Any input or expansion on that if it isn't too tangential to the errr main thrust of the thread?Just dug this up on google: SpringerLink - Journal ArticleAbstract We report body mass and testicular size in 258 anubis (Papio anubis or P. hamadryas anubis) and 59 hamadryas (P. hamadryas or P. h. hamadryas) baboons, live-trapped in Ethiopia. As predicted by theories of sexual selection by sperm competition, among hamadryas baboons, which are monandrous, fully adult males have absolutely and relatively smaller testes than those of comparable males among anubis baboons, which are polyandrous. Male hamadryas are also ca. 10% smaller in bodily mass as adults. The intertaxonal difference in adults is due entirely to the fact that in male anubis baboons, testicular and bodily mass continue to grow up to full adulthood–the age at which most males emigrate from their natal troop and initiate a confrontational breeding strategy among unrelated animals. By contrast, male hamadryas baboons, which are usually philopatric, attain adult body mass and testicular size as subadults. In both species, juveniles experience rapid testicular growth peaking in rate at ca. 12kg body mass, but testicular descent and growth starts earlier in hamadryas than in anubis baboons. Juvenile hamadryas baboons have relatively larger testes than their anubis equivalents, perhaps because male philopatry allows the mating strategy of male hamadryas baboons to be initiated during juvenile life and therefore permits some sperm competition between juveniles and adults. Sperm competition is serious business. Some organisms have sperm that only serve to block the sperm of competing males. Some sperm have evolved extremely long tails to block the entry of later mating males. The wiki page above is a good place to start if you are interested in more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemit Posted July 1, 2009 Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 Okay, Galapagos, I searched "whale penis" and added to the statistics of the church. Have you ever hunted snipe? That's the best way to find out about their penises. Be sure to bring a bag. --lemit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted July 1, 2009 Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 See this link for a view of my penis...... You looked for the link, didn't you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemit Posted July 1, 2009 Report Share Posted July 1, 2009 Okay, Galapagos, you can give that bag you're holding to Moontanman. Maybe he'll cover himself with it. --lemit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A23 Posted May 14, 2010 Report Share Posted May 14, 2010 Do you mean, in some way, that sterile interspecies breeding with human, for example, could change the size of these parts in human ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted May 15, 2010 Report Share Posted May 15, 2010 Do you mean, in some way, that sterile interspecies breeding with human, for example, could change the size of these parts in human ? No one has said anything to indicate this. This is however interesting, cross phylum interbreeding? 13 more things: Hybrid life - 02 September 2009 - New Scientist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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