A set of photographs that appear to show a well-endowed frog have been stunning people and flustering lady-frogs all over the Internet. Who can blame them? Just look at the size of this thing.
The images emerged last week from a man in Victoria, Australia, who seems to have found the frog in his garden.
However, as any frog sex enthusiast will tell you, frogs don't have penises. Most frog species mate in a process called amplexus, where fertilization of eggs occurs outside the body.
As Gerry Marantelli from the Australian Amphibian Research Centre told BuzzFeed News, this impressive piece of manhood is most likely to be an "extra partially formed leg." Yep, it's literally a "third leg."
Gerry added: “It’s not a penis, frogs don’t have them, but penises did evolve from ‘legs’ during embryonic development so an extra leg is part way there. Amphibians in one way likely invented the penis (albeit not the modern one).”
But don’t feel too sorry for frogs. Like many species of birds, reptiles, and other amphibians, frogs have a cloaca. This organ, which can be found in both females and males, acts as passage for waste and sperm or eggs (on a offbeat side note, some turtlescan even breath out of them). The males of the tailed frog species actually have an extended reproductive tract that it uses to funnel sperm. So, if you're still keen to see some frog reproductive organs, check out the tailed frog in all its humble glory:
image credit: Mokele/Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
No comments:
Post a Comment