![]() Credit: Jane FenelonĪmong echidna females, in addition to laying an egg, the pouch where they nurse their young is only a temporary structure and develops by the thickening of the lateral margins around the abdominal region that surrounds the mammary glands.īut perhaps what is most bizarre about the echidna penis is that it has four heads, which are actually rosette-like glans at the end. The American Naturalist 170(6):E162-E164.The echidnas penis is stored internally when not in use. (2007) One-Sided Ejaculation of Echidna Sperm Bundles. and Smith, Brett and Pyne, Michael and Stenzel, Deborah J. YAY FOR WEIRD PENISES AND SPERM THAT WORK TOGETHER! With all this competition to be the one to fertilise the egg, males whose sperm behave in this “bundling” way will be more likely to father the offspring and therefore the team-building sperm would be favoured by natural selection, causing it to become widespread in the population. Fertile females are never left alone for very long: Males will quite literally queue up to mate with them. What’ going on here? The most likely answer is sperm competition. By examining the number of sperm in the ejaculate, they found that up to 100 individual sperm would bundle together, and this caused them to move very quickly in a very organised fashion- causing them to be much more effective working as a team than alone. The scientists actually did some pretty cool research with the semen they collected. What’s that you say, the imagery just isn’t strong enough? Well here is A VIDEO of the process! (You’re freakin’ welcome) Pushes his hand into the lower abdomen of the animal,Īt which time the echidna usually responds by pushing itsĬloaca up against the zookeeper’s fist and developing an Using a closed fist, the zookeeper gently In lateral recumbency on a clean surface of the floor of In preparation for semen collection, the echidna is placed Wildlife Sanctuary conditioned the echidna to developĪn erection to the point where it would ejaculate. Over a period of 2 weeks, zookeepers at Currumbin ![]() Noted that, on handling, this animal would readily produceĪn erection. Male echidna that had become habituated to human presenceĪs part of an interactive public display. ![]() ![]() In 2005, Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (Gold Coast,Īustralia) came into possession of a 17-year-old captive Below is a direct quote from the article, describing how research on such matters is carried out (basically, it would seem, you train an animal to be okay with getting erections out of context, then you masturbate it until it ejaculates). I even found an academic paper on the echidna’s penis, published in one of America’s oldest academic journals nonetheless. In fact, if all four heads are active and grow in size, the penis would have great difficulty getting inside the reproductive tract of the female, which only has two canals. The next time he mates, the heads on the other side will be used. What we do know that when a male echidna has sex with a female echidna, one side of the penis seems to shut down, leaving only two out of the four heads in use. But WHY LAUREN?! I hear ye screech?! The short answer is that we don’t really know. IT HAS FOUR HEADS! FOUR! I think it looks like the foot of a baby rhino or something.
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