Penis Facts

Next, here are some little-known penis facts! All taken from my lecture by the lovely Dr Sarah Johns.

1- Richard Dawkins noted that the boneless human penis is a sexually selected trait. As most primates have a bone at the base of their penis, the fact that humans don’t is a way of an individual showing how fit he is as he doesn’t need a bone to maintain a hard erection

2-Where females mate with multiple males, it leads to fancy penis morphology. Where females are more monogamous, penis morphology tends to be simpler

3- Humans’ glans is exaggerated and has a coronal ridge, which is thought to function as a semen scoop- scooping out the previous male's sperm

4-Testes size is correlated with the level of polygyny in the mating system, not just body size. Human teste size indicates a limited degree of polygyny is likely to have been typical of our recent ancestors

5-Production of sperm cannot occur at the body temperature of most mammals. Testes are therefore held outside the abdominal cavity, where the temperature is lower