A penis (plural penises or penes)
is the main sexual organ that male and hermaphrodite animals
use to inseminate sexually receptive mates (usually females and
hermaphrodites respectively) in the course of copulation. Such organs occur in many
animals, both vertebrate and
invertebrate,
but males do not bear a penis in every animal species, and in those species in
which the male does bear a so-called penis, the penes in the various species
are not necessarily homologous. For example, the penis of a mammal
is at most analogous to the penis of a male insect or barnacle.
The
term penis applies to many reproductive intromittent organs, but not to all; for example
the intromittent organ of most cephalopoda is
the hectocotylus,
a specialized arm, and male spiders use their pedipalps. Even
within the Vertebrata there are morphological variants with
specific terminology, such as hemipenes.
In
most species of animals in which there is an organ that might reasonably be
described as a penis, it has no major function other than intromission, or at
least conveying the sperm to the female, but in the placental mammals the
penis bears the distal part of the urethra, which
discharges both urine
during urination and semen during
copulation as the occasion requires.
Richard Odei-Nkansah
rimles.blogspot.com
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