Anonymous ID: cc49b7 July 25, 2022, 6:06 p.m. No.16817144   🗄️.is 🔗kun

The female hyena has an 8-inch clitoris—plus more animal genital trivia

 

The dolphin has one that is spiral-shaped and filled with trap doors. The ring-tailed lemur’s disappears, and the opossum has three.

 

Welcome to the wild, weird and woefully ignored world of animal vaginas.

 

There are vaginas that look nothing like vaginas, such as the spider monkey’s pseudo penis or the hyena’s 8-inch clitoral tube out of which she pees, copulates and gives birth.

 

“Biologists love penises,” writes Rachel Gross in “Vagina Obscura” (Norton), noting that the vagina has typically been given short shrift by animal researchers. “They’re also easy to study. Penises kind of hang out.”

 

The field has suffered from the long-held belief that vaginas were mere passive receptacles — a bias that extended to female animals in general. Gross calls this “vagina neglect.” Mount Holyoke biology professor Patricia Brennan, who has studied vaginas for nearly two decades, calls it “the copulatory black box.”

 

The 2014 study “Genital Evolution: Why Are Females Still Understudied” found that 49% of papers published in the last 25 years only studied male sex organs, compared to 8% that focused solely on female anatomy. “We argue that understanding genital evolution is hampered by an outdated single-sex bias,” the paper reads.

 

In the last decade, however, there’s been an overhaul of the study of animal genitals, as long-established beliefs aren’t standing up to scrutiny.

 

Vaginas are finally having their day in the sun — especially in the rollicking new book “Bitch: On the Female of the Species” (Basic Books) by Lucy Cooke, out now.

 

“In the natural world female form and role varies wildly to encompass a fascinating spectrum of anatomies and behaviors,” writes Cooke, an author, TV personality, zoologist and self-proclaimed explorer. This new understanding of female anatomy “redefines not just the female of the species, but the very forces that shape evolution.”

 

end part I

 

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1540958299218132992

 

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