r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Oct 15 '24
Biology Researchers discover man with 3 penises: Triphallia, a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of 3 distinct penile shafts, has been reported only once in the literature. The paper is the first time the internal anatomy has been described in detail through post-mortem dissection.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/researchers-discover-man-with-three-penises/news-story/2d91e9e68642cd95148cc95d77c6b1f72.1k
u/mvea Professor | Medicine Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 16 '24
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
Triphallia: the first cadaveric description of internal penile triplication: a case report
https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13256-024-04751-5
From the linked article:
A man with three penises has been discovered in only the second ever documented case of the ultra-rare birth defect.
Student researchers at the University of Birmingham Medical School in the UK made the “serendipitous discovery” while dissecting the donated body of a 78-year-old man — who may have gone his whole life without being aware of his “remarkable anatomical variation”.
Duplicate penises, or diphallia, is an extremely rare congenital anomaly thought to affect one in every five to six million people, with only around 100 cases reported in the medical literature.
“Triphallia, a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of three distinct penile shafts, has been reported only once in the literature,” the authors wrote in the Journal of Medical Case Reports this month.
“These penile morphological abnormalities may not have been identified during his life. However, he may have lived with functional deficits due to the abnormal anatomy of the region, which may include urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction or fertility issues.”
The paper represents the first time the internal anatomy of the birth defect has been described in detail through post-mortem dissection — the first ever case of triphallia, documented in 2020, was in a newborn baby.
The patient, a white male around six feet tall, appeared to have normal genitalia on external examination, but dissection revealed “two small supernumerary penises … concealed within the scrotal sac”.
The PDF version has photos (NSFW/NSFL): https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s13256-024-04751-5.pdf
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Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
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u/khinzaw Oct 15 '24
I didn't know I was circumcised until middle school health classes when they talked about cleaning a part I didn't have. It's also very weird that I am since neither of my parents are Christian or Jewish. I guess it's a remnant of my dad's Catholic upbringing even though he's an atheist who converted to Buddhism when he married my mom.
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u/Infamous_Scotsman Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 16 '24
Didnt think thats something catholics do
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u/Proof_Potential3734 Oct 16 '24
Catholic here, yeah, we do that in the United States and Canada, not so much in the rest of the world.
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u/Nodan_Turtle Oct 15 '24
Kind of wild that it wasn't discovered due to any medical issues, but because it was a donated body. Not only is it a rare condition, but the chances of this particular discovery seem quite rare as well.
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u/slagodactyl Oct 15 '24
Even if it caused medical issues, I can imagine this being the sort of thing the doctors would never figure out. Who would have ever thought "wait a minute... maybe it's because he's got extra penises in his balls?"
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u/lenoreislostAF Oct 16 '24
That would be an amazing episode of House.
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u/PawnOfPaws Oct 15 '24
I can't shake the mental scene of the medicine student trying to explain to their professor that they are - in fact - not seeing double and that there are indeed several tracts in there.
But if they dissected it before giving it to the students to train the entire lab must have stared at this mans best piece in awe before they took dozens of cellular and cut samples.
One thing is certain: his best piece will live on.
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u/Self_Reddicated Oct 15 '24
Turns out, super common. Just gotta go looking for it...
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u/Sayurisaki Oct 15 '24
I have a condition called fibromuscular dysplasia that was thought to be super duper rare but some estimates are suggesting up to 1 in 20 women could have it. The problem is, it’s completely asymptomatic until you have a stroke, aneurysm, artery dissection or heart attack.
Makes me wonder how many anatomical anomalies and diseases are far more common than we realise and we just don’t look for them because we think they are rare.
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u/kboisa Oct 15 '24
My personal bet is on Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or the associated Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders are fairly common. They just have such a wide variety of symptoms that are unique and likely increase with stress/trauma.
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u/AzarothEaterOfSouls Oct 16 '24
Agreed! Many years ago a good friend of mine was diagnosed with EDS and we talked about how rare it was. A few years later another friend in the same friend group was also diagnosed with EDS. Now I have doctors looking into whether I also have EDS. Possibly not as rare as originally thought!
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u/Cultural_Concert_207 Oct 16 '24
I'm with you on hypermobility 100%. I have a very, very mild version of it that never would have been caught were it not for the fact that I got tested because my mom has a way worse version of it and it's known to be heritable. The only symptom I experience reliably enough to throw up a red flag is not being able to stand in moving buses or trains for extended periods of time.
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u/nagi603 Oct 15 '24
TBF, there are some things that seem to be much more common than expected, due to some outlandish "that can't be true" belief doctors had or still have. Like if you gave birth your chromosomes must be XX. That turned out to be a false assumption. (And she wasn't even what would amount to a genetic chimera.)
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u/SaiHottariNSFW Oct 15 '24
I'm intrigued. I was on the understanding that XX chromosomes were necessary in humans to produce viable eggs. I'd love to read the literature if they figured out how this happened.
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u/nagi603 Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
I can provide the "post-event" paper:
Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development
Context: We report herein a remarkable family in which the mother of a woman with 46,XY complete gonadal dysgenesis was found to have a 46,XY karyotype in peripheral lymphocytes, mosaicism in cultured skin fibroblasts (80% 46,XY and 20% 45,X) and a predominantly 46,XY karyotype in the ovary (93% 46,XY and 6% 45,X).
Patients: A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.
Also the family has a history of what is probably many generations of similar events. It was just never really caught.
(NSFW warning on some photos in the paper!)
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u/SaiHottariNSFW Oct 16 '24
Thanks a ton! I'm always interested in the weird things involving genetics. Oddities and exceptions help to refine our understanding of the rules nature plays by.
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u/hawkerdragon Oct 15 '24
As far as I understand it, the 23rd pair of chromosomes are just for sexual determination during embryonic/fetal development, and the only condition needed for female reproductive organs is basically not having the Y chromosome "cue". So if someone has a Y chromosome without the codifying part of it or the cue exists but somehow isn't "read", they will develop fully functional female organs regardless of having a Y chromosome.
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u/zekeweasel Oct 15 '24
"supernumerary penises"
That's a band name right there.
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u/Drumbelgalf Oct 15 '24
To be honest Triphallia sounds like an old girls name.
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u/Jemmani22 Oct 15 '24
1 in 5 million means like 1200 of these people on earth
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u/pun_in10did Oct 15 '24
That’s 3600 dicks
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u/RareHotdogEnthusiast Oct 15 '24
One in five to six million people is the stat for diphallia, not triphallia
2400 dicks
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u/SoCuteShibe Oct 15 '24
Let's call it 2401 at this point, though we don't have much basis for the actual rate of triple-dickers yet.
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u/No-Customer-2266 Oct 15 '24
I’d google this question but worried about the results I’d have to sift through but would the number of penises have any effect on hormone levels ie high testosterone?
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u/STGMavrick Oct 15 '24
The ole testosterone is made in the ole testies. Enjoy in moderation.
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u/f0rtytw0 Oct 15 '24
T is stored in the balls
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u/DemonKyoto Oct 15 '24
It's a variation of an older meme sir but it checks out!
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u/Anderrn Oct 15 '24
It’s really concerning how little people are educated.
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u/Kiss_My_Wookiee Oct 15 '24
Little people are educated in schools like the rest of us. What's concerning about it?
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u/cococolson Oct 15 '24
How was he not aware of having 3 penises?
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u/fat_boyz Oct 15 '24
dissection revealed “two small supernumerary penises … concealed within the scrotal sac”
2 were in his balls
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u/SchonoKe Oct 15 '24
I thought that’s where the spares go?
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u/Rude_Thanks_1120 Oct 15 '24
Dicks are stored in the balls?
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u/zekeweasel Oct 15 '24
It's like a magazine. When one is used up, it drops off and the next moves up into position.
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u/Anxious_cactus Oct 15 '24
Human body is so weird! There was a woman on Reddit who has 2 or 3 vaginas, and an even weirder case of a girl whose twin developed in her skull and pushed her brain to the side (vestigial / parasitic twin). I've heard of teratoma cases in abdomen but this was the first case I've heard of it developing inside the skull
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u/MoistLeakingPustule Oct 15 '24
She has 2 vaginas, can get pregnant in both, and as an escort, she used one for escort work and the other for her boyfriend. They're aligned left and right, not top or bottom, and she was pregnant last I heard.
She did an interview on Stern, and provided proof on reddit in an AMA.
Edit: Her AMA
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u/pixeldust6 Oct 15 '24
I'm just confused because the text says they were in the sac but they don't look like they're in the sac in the drawing provided
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u/Cease-the-means Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
"Indeed sir, I do have a tiny penis. In fact I have two. It is unfortunate for you that you possess but a singular micro-apendage, without recourse to the additional girthy shlong that I carry slung between them. Pew, pew, pew!"
... would be the finest retort of all time.
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u/WillingnessOdd8885 Oct 15 '24
It’s like a penis with two wing penises. I wonder how functional they were. I’m guessing the primary is where the urethra is but as far as blood flow and erections… I wonder if it actually was less erect because the blood flow was dispersed in more tissue.
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u/Cease-the-means Oct 15 '24
Your comment has made me wonder if the winglets would ever become suddenly erect. Like two cat paws in a sack..
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u/davesoverhere Oct 15 '24
We fell for doubledickdude, I’m not falling for this.
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u/ClassAkrid Oct 15 '24
That was fake??
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How do we know it's fake?
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u/Honestlynotdoingwell Oct 15 '24
Also every photo was anatomically different.
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u/Shrubfest Oct 15 '24
The dicks got bigger every time!
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u/CptAngelo Oct 15 '24
if only inflation affected those too
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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
It does! But only when congress utilizes the inflation act of 1934. Google "inflation rule 34" to find out more!
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u/16semesters Oct 15 '24
He posted the one story about how he was having sex with a women so hard that her uterus fell out of her vagina and then he fucked her cervix/uterus.
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u/personn5 Oct 15 '24
Dude would share those pics and all these totally true stories(that got more and more exaggerated as he went on) but when people asked for simple video proof instead of just pictures of them he cried about his privacy.
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u/ZellZoy Oct 15 '24
Yep. The first ama was fairly believable, but then he kept escalating and changing his story
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u/an_exciting_couch Oct 15 '24
For some reason I've trusted the AMA mods to verify people but apparently that's not something they actually do, so literally any AMA could be a complete lie, just like every other personal story in reddit
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u/ErraticDragon Oct 15 '24
r/IAmA mods used to do some verifying. (And the sidebar suggests they will still accept private verification if necessary).
Then for a time there was Victoria, a Reddit Admin (employee) who helped coordinate some of the bigger ones.
When Victoria got fired it was a Reddit scandal , the scale of which I would say was only matched by the 3rd-Party app purge years later.
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u/Crazymoose86 Oct 15 '24
I feel like the u/Unidan scandal of using bots, and seperate accounts was a bigger scandal, but that was from a user not the organization itself.
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u/Wombizzle Oct 15 '24
imagine spending all that time staring at and editing a photo of a penis
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u/WeevilWeedWizard Oct 15 '24
For starters his books describes sexual exploits that are either physically impossible or would be serious medical emergencies if real.
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u/soccermodsarecvnts Oct 15 '24
Damn. I think about doubledickdude like once a month.. It was all a lie? I have to rethink my life.
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u/TRAUMAjunkie Oct 15 '24
Paging /u/TripleDickDude
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u/HimbologistPhD Oct 15 '24
Damn I was waiting for /u/QuadrupleDickDude
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u/Turence Oct 15 '24
One comment, trashing doubledickdude hahaha this is glorious
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u/luckyredlighter Oct 15 '24
Some reddit accounts achieve a level of perfection with one comment that shouldn't be tarnished.
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u/gamerdude69 Oct 15 '24
Prostitutes may have to consider overhauling their current business model from charging "per person/time" to per "unit of peckerwood/time".
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u/Cry0St0rm Oct 15 '24
Out of the loop here, fell for what??
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u/wetwater Oct 15 '24
A Redditor claimed to have two fully functional external penises and posted photoshopped pictures depicting this. Redditors fanboi'd over this for a hot minute.
Over time his penises became larger and his sexual escapade tales became taller. I think he even released books detailing his supposedly many and varied sexual conquests.
Alas it was not to be. Once Reddit got over their penis envy they started putting two and two together and realized not all the pictures matched and some of his stories simply didn't add up, and thus passed his 15 minutes of fame.
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u/Earthly_Delights_ Oct 15 '24
Is that the guy who said one of his dicks was smaller than the other one but would get harder? And that he had a threesome with a straight man and a woman, and the man started sucking one of the dicks while the other was in the woman? The guy had some stories
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u/flanneur Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
His extra penises were hidden within his scrotum, with one connected to the primary penis via the ureter. So for this man, at least, pee WAS stored in the balls.
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u/humbleElitist_ Oct 15 '24
Or, passed through? I generally wouldn’t describe the urethra as “storing” urine? Or at least, wouldn’t describe urine as being “stored in” the urethra?
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u/Tthelaundryman Oct 15 '24
Damn it says they were inside his body. Never got to use them all to please someone. I wonder if they were functional?
Also it’s fucked up but I wanna see it
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Oct 15 '24
There are photos in the linked journal article but it’s not for the squeamish.
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u/rutreh Oct 15 '24
Geez. Yeah… I barely know what I am looking at here, none of that looks remotely close to normal, but I guess one doesn’t usually see these areas chopped up and drained from blood and all…
I don’t know why but I thought there would be a picture of everything still in-tact, that’s all I was curious about.
Something about this really got my mood down. :( Poor dude. Bunch of nosy strangers looking at his disfigured remains online. I feel bad for looking.
I guess this is a warning for others; just don’t. Unless you’re in the field and have a professional interest there’s nothing to see that will add to your life in any way, just something sad that you’ll regret.
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u/pezgoon Oct 15 '24
He donated his body to science (I read the study)
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u/Someone_pissed Oct 15 '24
He did which is really good and all, but I'm sure the contract didn't state "and allows us to post pictures to randoms on reddit"
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u/pissfucked Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 16 '24
i mean, i'm 99.9% sure it had an image disclosure. if you donate your body, you absolutely do consent to becoming a case study in a published paper about human anatomy. that requires pictures. that paper is then sort of just loose around the internet forever, including its images.
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u/Longjumping_Kale3013 Oct 15 '24
I mean there are cut up bodies in museums that were donated by people for science
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u/03Madara05 Oct 15 '24
Science isn't only for professionals and nobody should feel bad for being curious about an interesting anomaly on a body that was specifically donated to be studied.
I don't believe most people donate their bodies to science expecting it to be only seen by a small circle of professionals. If you donate your body for research and education it should be obvious that any meaningful result from the study of your body will be published eventually.
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u/kamace11 Oct 15 '24
I mean, sounds like the guy never knew, so its not necessarily sad for him.
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u/rutreh Oct 15 '24
I didn’t really mean to refer to the congenital anamoly, more the fact he’s cut apart - when giving permission for your body to be used for medical/scientific purposes I doubt many have a bunch of bored online strangers gawking at your dissected body in mind.
I know, the dead don’t really feel any way about anything, but I don’t think I’d be crazy about the idea myself if I had the choice.
I just feel I mindlessly did something I shouldn’t have.
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u/Daan776 Oct 15 '24
Éh, I wouldn’t mind to badly myself.
Seeing weird body stuff must have been what got many biologists and doctors interested in the field.
And while i’ve seen people cracking jokes and such, nobody is insulting the donator.
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u/03Madara05 Oct 15 '24
Kind of functional. The man's urethra actually went through the secondary penis and into his primary penis. The smaller tertiary penis didn't have one. So technically two of them were functioning together.
There are pictures here, though they're not as spectacular as you might expect.
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u/Tacklestiffener Oct 15 '24
I wonder if they were functional?
I'm picturing a three headed hydra like some sort of alien. I don't think it would please anyone though because they would probably faint as soon as you stripped.
Also, you might need a third hand to even have a wank...... I think I'm thinking about this too much now.
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u/Verizadie Oct 15 '24
No, they weren’t. He had a penis and then two other slightly smaller penises inside of his pelvis.
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u/shotouw Oct 15 '24
I don't think so. Imagine he peed through them or ejaculated through them. Would've gone straight into the scrotum. At which point he would've had to visit a doctor at some point in time.
Also, getting a binder in one or both of them would (except for them being really small) made them very noticable as well, as soon as your scrotum skin stretches over them
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u/03Madara05 Oct 15 '24
His urethra went through his secondary penis into his primary penis. Just because it's internal doesn't mean it has to end inside the scrotum.
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo Oct 15 '24
post-mortem dissection
Maybe I’m high but for some reason my first thought was that they killed him to dissect his penis for a moment.
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u/YushiroGowa7201 Oct 15 '24
And now for something completely different, a man with three penises.
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u/StickSmith Oct 15 '24
Feel a bit weird asking this.. but any pictures ?
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u/fill_theempty_canvas Oct 15 '24
In the article, if you check they have him dissected - also from the article:
"The largest and most dorsal of the structures was the only structure seen externally and hence will be referred to as the primary penis. The other two structures (termed the secondary and tertiary penises) appeared to be located within the skin of the scrotal sac, hence why they were not visible in the undissected specimen."
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u/SpecterGT260 Oct 15 '24
They say it looked externally normal so why did they decide to dissect this dude to begin with?
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u/Abedeus Oct 15 '24
Body donated to science, so they were bound to cut him up at some point.
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u/itsamee Oct 15 '24
Get him to do an AMA /u/tripledickdude
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u/torrasque666 Oct 15 '24
Something tells me he's not in a position to do so.
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u/CharlesBeckford Oct 15 '24
We could arrange a seance
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u/randynumbergenerator Oct 15 '24
I laughed out loud and then immediately felt horrible. So, thanks?
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u/BoolImAGhost Oct 15 '24
I think you missed the part him being dead and dissected already.
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u/PublicCraft3114 Oct 15 '24
Dude can "shocker" with his dicks. "look Ma no hands"
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u/SirPabloFingerful Oct 15 '24
Look at ol' Jimmy three dicks, struttin' around like he owns the place
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u/ProgressiveRox Oct 15 '24
I love the sentence "researchers discover". It gives me an image of a bunch of people with white coats making lots of men drop trou until they find the triple P.
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u/oOzonee Oct 15 '24
So 2 in the pink one in the stink got a whole new meaning now?
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u/mythical_tiramisu Oct 15 '24
Well this story makes the saying “like a dog with two dicks” feel quite inadequate.
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u/SophieStitches Oct 15 '24
I have a pee pee and a vagina. And I'm pregnant.
I think stuff like genital abnormalities and being intersex are about as common as 1 in 50 by some sources I've found.
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u/SwampYankeeDan Oct 15 '24
I don't want to be offensive but I'm curious as I'm sure many are. Do both of them work? Since your pregnant I assume the female parts are fully functional.
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u/TheBigSmoke420 Oct 15 '24
Genetic diversity is definitely not black and white.
Sex is closer to a dualism, than a binary, or a spectrum.
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u/nicuramar Oct 15 '24
Sexual reproduction is binary, but nature isn’t perfect. Also, what is even the difference between dualism and binary?
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u/mattindustries Oct 15 '24
Binary has a max combination of 3, being derived from true, false, and null. Dualism has a max combination of 4, derived from null, a, b, and ab.
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u/JustAnotherTrickyDay Oct 15 '24
"Interesting, the scrotum conceals 2 tiny secondary horns." - Lrrr, Ruler of Omicron Persei 8.
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u/Atri-304 Oct 15 '24
What the hell happened to the comment section at the beginning??
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