Scientists Discover The Origin Of The Penis
While most of us take our ding dongs for granted, stop and think for a minute ? how does this thing form, anyway? That?s exactly what researchers from Harvard wanted to know, so they set out to examine snake, lizard, mouse and chicken embryos. They found that basically, wherever an animal?s penis grows from, it was born out of cells previously earmarked for something else.
Even weirder, what determines where this happens is basically your butthole: The cloaca, the lower part of the gut used for waste elimination (and much more, depending on the animal) is what signals penis formation. In mice, what would have been tail cells grow into the penis due to the cloaca?s location. Snakes end up getting two penises, due to the cloaca?s proximity to their vestigial legs. In humans, then, it would follow that our manhoods form from either vestigial tail cells or leg cells.
Yes, it?s possible that you can refer to your penis as your ?third leg? and be anatomically correct.
Other researchers from the University of Florida performed their own work on embryos, tracked eventual sex organ cells when the embryo was still a flat sheet. They found that they actually begin as two separate groups on either end of the cell, and then come together when the sheet rolls into a tube. That?s important, as it could mean that genital defects in people are the result of that body wall ?tube? not curling up and closing properly.
