Scientists discover female snakes have a clitoris

Home*Cover Story*News

Scientists discover female snakes have a clitoris

It’s been a big year for the clitoris, an scientists discovered bottlenose dolphins have a large S-shaped clitoris that might be better placed for pleasure than the female human version.

Just last month, researchers realized that the female sex organ, showed more than ten thousand nerve endings and now for the first time, scientists have uncovered the equivalent sex organ in female snakes, striking down a host of misconceptions in the process.

Reproductive biologist Megan Folwell of the University of Adelaide in Australia and colleagues peeled back the layers of female snake genitalia across nine different species, using micro-CT imaging and dissection techniques.

They found that like their male counterparts who have two penises (called hemipenes), female snakes have two hemiclitores that form a triangular structure that varies in size and shape.

However female snake reproductive parts don’t pop out the way hemipenes do.

Unlike the hemiclitores of lizards, which are eversible (meaning they can be flipped out of the body and tucked back in) the hemiclitores of snakes lack retractor muscles.

 

COMMENTS

WORDPRESS: 0
DISQUS: 0