Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
The external sexual member (phallus) is found at various stages of
development within the mammal class, both in regard to size and shape,
and the differentiation and structure of its various parts; this
applies especially to the terminal part of the phallus, the glans,
both the larger glans penis of the male and the smaller glans
clitoridis of the female. The part of the cloaca from the upper wall
of which it forms belongs to the proctodaeum, the ectodermic
invagination of the rectum (Chapter 2.27); hence its epithelial
covering can develop the same horny growths as the corneous layer of
the epidermis. Thus the glans, which is quite smooth in man and the
higher apes, is covered with spines in many of the lower apes and in
the cat, and in many of the rodents with hairs (marmot) or scales
(guinea-pig) or solid horny warts (beaver). Many of the Ungulates have
a free conical projection on the glans, and in many of the Ruminants
this "phallus-tentacle" grows into a long cone, bent hook-wise at the
base (as in the goat, antelope, gazelle, etc.). The different forms of
the phallus are connected with variations in the structure and
distribution of the sensory corpuscles--i.e. the real organs of the
sexual sense, which develop in certain papillae of the corium of the
phallus, and have been evolved from ordinary tactile corpuscles of the
corium by erotic adaptation (Chapter 2.25).
The formation of the corpora cavernosa, which cause the stiffness of
the phallus and its capability of penetrating the vagina, by certain
special structures of their spongy vascular spaces, also shows a good
deal of variety within the vertebrate stem. This stiffness is
increased in many orders of mammals (especially the carnassia and
rodents) by the ossification of a part of the fibrous body (corpus
fibrosum). This penis-bone (os priapi) is very large in the badger and
dog, and bent like a hook in the marten; it is also very large in some
of the lower apes, and protrudes far out into the glans. It is wanting
in most of the anthropoid apes; it seems to have been lost in their
case (and in man) by atrophy.
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