A man donated his body to science after death and managed to leave medical students with one final anatomical curveball: three penises.
According to Live Science, students in the United Kingdom were dissecting the cadaver of a 78-year-old man when they found what the case report called a “serendipitous discovery” inside his pelvis. From the outside, the man appeared to have one penis. Internally, he had three.
The condition is called triphallia, which means exactly what it sounds like. Three penile structures. Three glanses. Three separate shafts with erectile tissue. One extremely complicated day in anatomy lab.
The visible penis measured about three inches long. The other two were smaller and tucked inside the scrotal sac, close enough to be anatomically connected but hidden from view.
This case, published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, appears to be the second known human case of triphallia in scientific literature and the first described through cadaver dissection. The authors wrote that triphallia is “a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of three distinct penile shafts.”
He May Not Have Even Known He Had three Penises
The plumbing, somehow, gets even weirder. The man had only one urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder. According to the report, it took a “meandering course” through one of the smaller internal penises before reaching the main external penis. If this man ever needed a catheter, things wouldn’t have gone well.
Researchers don’t know whether he knew about the condition. They didn’t have his name, medical history, or records. Still, they doubted it went completely unnoticed. The authors noted that the unusual anatomy could have caused urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction, fertility problems, or pain during sex, though they couldn’t confirm what symptoms he experienced in life.
The likely explanation goes back to fetal development. Early in pregnancy, a structure called the genital tubercle develops into the external genitalia. The report suggested there may have been a triplication of that structure, which led to three penises developing instead of one.
There’s an obvious urge to make the stupid joke here, because humans are simple creatures. But there’s also something oddly moving about it. A man lived 78 years with a body that held a strange secret that made medical history.
Even after death, he gave doctors something new to learn. That’s a hell of a parting gift.
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