Bone in the penis - why do not people have it?

24. 05. 2018
6th international conference of exopolitics, history and spirituality

One of the marvelous but also wonderful products of evolution is bone in the penis or baculum. Baculum is bone out of the skeleton, which means it is not attached to the rest of the skeleton, but instead floats freely to the roots of the penis. Depending on the species, the size of the bone ranges from millimeters to almost meters, and has a shape that ranges from pinholes to the right stick.

The walrus baculum, which you can easily confuse with a half-meter stick, is about one-sixth the length of its body, while the only centimeter-long penis bone of a lemur is only about one-fortieth the length of its body.

Penis bone and evolution

Penis bone occurs in some mammalian species, but not at all! Most male primates have a baculum, so it's more remarkable in humans that they do not have it. Thanks to a handful of extraordinary circumstances, the bone does not form a bone in the soft tissue, and is therefore a rare abnormality. Me and my colleague Kit Opie, in a new study, published in the Royal Society Proceedings, investigated how this bone developed in mammals across different species in terms of their evolutionary descent (known as phylogeny).

We have shown that the penis bone developed first after the placental and non-placental mammals had broken down, probably before 145 for millions of years, before developing the oldest common ancestor of primates and carnivores around 95 for millions of years. Our research also shows that the common ancestor of primates and predators had such a bone. This means that all species in these groups without penis bone, such as humans, had to lost during evolution.

Penis bone and theory

So why would an animal need bone in her penis? Scientists have come up with a few theories why it could happen or why it might be useful. For some species, such as cats, the flesh of the female does not free the eggs until it coagulates, some argue that baculum it can help the female to stimulate, and so to cause ovulation. Another, somewhat color-coded theory is the hypothesis of vaginal friction. In essence, it claims that baculum acts as a shoe-making shoe, which allows the male to overcome any friction and allow it to penetrate the female.

Finally, the theory was said, that baculum helps to prolong the penetration time, otherwise known as vaginal penetration. Not only would this be a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, but also prolonging sexual intercourse is a way to prevent a man from slipping out of a woman and she has reunited with someone else before his sperm have a chance to do their duty. This theory brings a whole new meaning to the term "close the tap."

We found out that during the whole development of primates the baculum was associated with longer duration of contact, (always longer than three minutes). In addition, males of primates with For longer periods of contact, usually a much longer penis bone than males of species where the contact is short. Another interesting discovery was that males of species that face a high rate of female sex fights have a longer baculum than those who face a lower level of female fights.

What people?

But what about people? If penis bone is so important in partner competition and prolonged copulation, why not have it? A brief answer to this is that people do not even include it in the need for longer contact. The average duration of contact in humans, from penis penetration to ejaculation, is less than two minutes in men!

But the bonobas (chimpanzee type) only dump for about 15 seconds and still have a penis bone, although only very small (about 8 mm). So, what distinguishes us from monkeys? It may be that it depends on our mating strategy. Women usually have minimal sexual competition, as they are usually associated with only one man. Perhaps the adoption of this pairing pattern, besides our short duration of association, was the last reason for penis bone loss.

Similar articles