Scientists find clitoris in female snakes

Scientists have discovered that snakes have clitoris, breaking with a long-held assumption that female snakes lack a sex organ.

The study published by them this Wednesday (14) details the first anatomical descriptions of the genitalia of female snakes.

Snake penises — called hemipenes — have been studied for decades. They are usually inverted—inside the body, they are bifurcated and some have spines or hooks to anchor the male inside the female.

The female sex organ has always remained “ignored in comparison” with the male, researchers said.

Not that it didn’t exist — rather, scientists weren’t really looking for it.

“There was a combination of factors: female genitalia were taboo, scientists couldn’t find them and everyone accepted the misidentification of intersex snakes,” says Megan Folwell, a doctoral candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia and responsible for the study. .

Their co-authored paper with other researchers was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week and locates the clitoris on the tail of a female snake.

Snakes have two individual clitoris—hemiclitors—separated by tissue and hidden in the underside of the tail. The double-walled organ is composed of nerves, collagen and red blood cells consistent with erectile tissue, explain the researchers.

Folwell says he started looking for the female sexual organ because he “always had difficulty accepting” the literature on this part of the anatomy of female snakes, claiming that sometimes they didn’t have a clitoris or that this structure disappeared due to evolution.

“I know that [o clitóris] it’s in many animals and it doesn’t make sense that it’s not in all snakes,” she says.

“I just had to take a look, to see if that structure was there or if it just got lost (through evolution),” he adds.

She began her search for the female sex organ in a death snake (acanthophis antarcticus) and found the clitoris — a heart-shaped structure — right away, near the animal’s scent glands, used to attract sexual partners.

“There was this double structure that was quite prominent in the female, which was quite different from the surrounding tissue — and there was no implication of the structures [do pênis] I’ve seen before.”

Folwell and his colleagues then verified the same trait in a variety of snakes—dissecting a total of nine species, including the carpet python (Morelia spilotes variegata), the biúta (Bitis arietans or Bitis lachesis) and the water snake (Agkistrodon bilineatus🇧🇷 The hemiclitors varied in size but were distinctive.

Rewriting the snake’s sex

The discovery now allows for new theories about the snake’s sex — which may involve female stimulation and pleasure.

Until now, scientists believed that intercourse between snakes was “mainly about coercion and the male snake forcing mating,” says Folwell.

This is because male snakes are typically quite physically aggressive during mating, while females are more “serene”.

“But now, with the discovery of the clitoris, we can start to look more at seduction and stimulation as another way for the female to be more willing and likely to mate with the male,” she says.

It also sheds new light on hypothetical snake foreplay. Male snakes usually wrap themselves around their partner’s tail — where the clitoris is located — and apply pressure to that part.

“This is a behavior that could indicate that they (male snakes) are, in practice, stimulating the female.”

Folwell says there has been a positive reception for the discovery in the world of snake science — “a little bit of a shock that it’s gone unnoticed for so long, but also a bit of a surprise because it makes sense that it exists.”

She notes that, in some snake species, the clitoris is fragile and particularly small — less than a millimeter.

There was also a prevailing belief that female snakes had a smaller version of the male hemipenis, as is the case with monitor lizards (Varanus🇧🇷 As such, in some studies of intersex snakes, scientists have mistakenly labeled a hemipenis as a hemiclitor.

One of the other researchers on the project, Professor Kate Sanders, also from the University of Adelaide, says the discovery would not have happened had it not been for Folwell’s “new perspective”.

“This discovery shows how science needs different thinkers with different ideas to evolve.”