Look, you asked for it, denizens of the Internet. When we published “The 10 strangest facts about penises,” it was a blockbuster hit. And as it turns out, that list was only the not-so-figurative tip of the iceberg. We discovered there are many more weird facts about the male member out there — so many that it seemed only reasonable to round them up into a second installment. So here it is — and we dare say it’s even stranger than the first one.
10. There is a fish with a penis on its head
Sadly, it doesn’t protrude from the forehead like a unicorn horn, as I had hoped. Gonads and a penis-like organ called the priapium are found on the chin of the Phallostethus cuulong, a species recently discovered in Vietnam. Conveniently, the female of this species has a genital opening on the throat. Now that’s a sex tape I’d like to see.
9. The biggest human penis belongs to Jonah Falcon
He’s just a regular 43-year-old from New York City who happens to have a 13.5-inch-long penis. He’s rejected the onslaught of offers to do porn in hopes of kindling a “legit” acting career.
8. The blue whale needs way more than a Magnum
With an average length of eight feet, the ocean giant’s penis is the largest known of any living animal.
7. No one wants to be hung like a shrew
The average shrew penis measures on average just 0.2 inches. Must be because they’re emasculated by all those shrews. (Sorry, had to.)
6. The penis is shaped like a boomerang during missionary
That’s what scientists found when they had couples get busy in an MRI machine. The key to making sense of this bizarre finding is that the researchers are talking about the entire penis, including the internal root, not just the external observable part. (Weird diagrams here.)
5. Some penises have multiple heads
I’m not referring to the popular wisdom of a guy “thinking with his dick” versus his “other head.” Many marsupials — opossums, for example — have two-headed penises. Echidnas have a four-headed penis that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life.
4. Lots of penises are barbed
I don’t mean that as poetic commentary on the complicated nature of sexual relationships. In the cat family, penises come with spikes that scratch the crap out of the vagina and stimulate ovulation.
3. The penis shrinks if unused
“Without regular erections, penile tissue can become less elastic and shrink, making the penis 1-2 centimeters shorter,” according to the dick docs at WebMD.
2. The oldest penis fossil dates back 425 million years
In 2003, researchers found a fossilized ostracod with a “large and stout” penis. They named it Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which translates to — wait for it — “amazing swimmer with a large penis.”
1. Don’t judge in the locker room
You just can’t tell from a flaccid penis how big it will be when it’s erect. As the Kinsey Institute puts it, “In general, smaller flaccid penises lengthen at erection by a greater percentage than do larger flaccid penises, with most men reaching an average size of 5 to 7 inches, so the flaccid size of a penis is not a good predictor of erect size.”
