![]() And just in case there was any doubt, it doesn’t make you go blind, either. Thankfully, nowadays, food manufacturers spend less time trying to convince the youth to give up masturbation. He invented cornflakes and other products because he thought that plain foods would lead Americans away from the “sin” of masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg, the breakfast cereal mastermind, hoped that they would. If it is difficult to have or maintain an erection while awake, but not during sleep, this can point to an underlying psychological cause, rather than a physical one. Whatever the reason behind nocturnal erections, they can be useful as a diagnostic tool. So, by reducing the inhibition, the penis becomes erect. These cells inhibit the tone of the penis. However, because people with vaginas experience something similar - nocturnal clitoral tumescence - bed wetting prevention is probably not the entire answer.Īnother potential explanation is that REM sleep is linked with switching off cells that produce noradrenaline in the locus coeruleus, which is in the brainstem. One theory is that it might help prevent bed wetting: An erection inhibits urination.Ī full bladder is known to stimulate nerves in a similar region to those involved in erections. This is also called “nocturnal penile tumescence,” and it’s still not clear why it happens. We don’t know for sure.Most people with penises have 3–5 erections every night, mostly during REM sleep. Still, in the case of the cetaceans’ maneuverable penises, Dean concedes, “It’s a speculation. “Male genitalia evolve much faster than other parts of the body,” says Dean, because even the slightest mating advantage can give an individual more offspring. The pelvic structures that make certain cetacean species such sexual virtuosos probably evolved very rapidly. Improved sexual performance remained the leading theory. But nope, a bigger pelvic bone didn’t correspond with bigger rib bones. To make sure the authors weren’t kidding themselves, they also looked at the ribs of big-testicled cetaceans to rule out the possibility that the relationship between large gonads and large pelvic bones was a coincidence-that all of the bones in the skeletons of these species were oversized and the pelvis bones were just going along for the ride. That’s a whale’s penis to me.” And now, surely, to all of us. ![]() ![]() “I think of it like a trick kite, controlled by two strings and capable of complex motion. “It has a mind of its own.” Specifically, it’s controlled by two strong muscles that pull with differing tension to let the organ change shape. “The penis of a whale or a dolphin is very dextrous,” says Dean. ![]() Consider that cetacean penises are, for want of a better word, prehensile. When it comes to whales and dolphins particularly, things are more complex still. For example, he says, “chimpanzees have gigantic testes-they’re almost as big as their brains.” Now that this image is forever lodged in your head, the more important point is that there’s a direct line from larger, more evolved pelvic bones to larger testicles to more sperm to more babies-which is the entire point. That’s important, says co-author Matthew Dean, of the University of Southern California: “Species that are the most promiscuous tend to have the largest testes.” The reason: the animals’ strategy for providing their sperm to as many receptive females as possible is to make a whole lot of it. It turned out that the animals with the largest pelvic bones in relation to overall body size also had larger testicles than the other species. To start with, Dines and his co-authors examined the pelvic bones of 130 whales and dolphins from 29 different species-not just superficially, but using a laser scanner that made exquisitely detailed 3-D models of the bones that could be digitally compared for similarities and differences. That’s the theory, anyway, and while it’s not quite a slam-dunk, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to support it.
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