![]() And bowhead whales lead extraordinarily frigid lives, spending much of the year in the Arctic Ocean. Water is very good at pulling heat out of a body, even at lukewarm temperatures. Staying cool may seem like the last thing a bowhead whale needs to worry about. It has two jobs, the first of which is to keep the whale’s brain cool. They found that they made close contact with a web of blood vessels at the base of the brain.īased on these findings and others, Werth and his colleagues think they know what the organ–which they dubbed the Corpus Cavernosum Maxillaris–is for. Werth and his colleagues traced the blood vessels out of the organ and into the interior of the whale head. Its anatomy strongly suggests that the whales can engorge it–hence the bloody mess it made when the whales were cut apart. The organ in the bowhead whale mouth, Werth and his colleagues found, has the same distinctively spongy tissue, along with copious vessels supplying it with blood. Unlike a bone, which is always hard, the penis can become soft again when its vessels pump out all the blood. Thus the penis becomes both enlarged and hardened. As the penis swells, collagen fibers wrapped around the spongy tissue stretch and then tighten. When blood pours into the penis, the tissue stores it in a multitude of cavities, stretching out to hold the increased volume. Penises–in humans, whales, and other mammals–are made of a distinctively sponge-like tissue. You see, the organ in the whale’s mouth turned out to be, biomechanically speaking, a twelve-foot-long penis. They brought one of the organs back to their lab, along with sections they chopped out of other organs, to examine under a microscope.Īnd this is where the story gets a little NSWF. They dissected some of the organs out of freshly killed whales, photographing them as they cut the tissue free. So Werth, Ford, and Craig George the Department of Wildlife Management at the North Slope Borough in Alaska decided to take a close look at the bowhead whales. One of Werth’s colleagues, Thomas Ford of Ocean Alliance, had noticed something similar in right whales twenty years ago. Response last updated by Terry on Oct 17 2016.Please be respectful of copyright. How it got mis-applied to whales specifically is an oddity. After, believe it or not, a conversation with a marine biologist at Scripps, we determined that "dork" never referred to any scientific description of a whale member. About a year ago I had a bet with a friend regarding the "whale" definition. The phenomenon we're discussing isn't people using the word that way - nobody really does! - the phenomenon is people claiming that dork means "whale penis" on the basis of no empirical evidence whatsoever.Īctually, I believe the "whale" definition is simply a common, incorrect definition. Lastly, in answer to those who have tried to rebut these findings by arguing that if enough people use the word dork to mean "whale penis" then it's a valid definition, here's what's wrong with that argument. of Fisheries and Wildlife, John Calambokidis, senior research biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research, Phillip Clapham of the National Marine Mammal Laboratory and author Richard Ellis (The Book of Whales, Men and Whales, Encyclopedia of the Sea, etc.) - all of whom told me they had never seen nor heard the word dork used in reference to a whale's reproductive anatomy - ever. ![]() In particular, there do not appear to be any marine biologists anywhere who vouch for this term.įor good measure, I queried several whale experts - Professor C. ![]() "dork" appears to be slang for generic penises of all types. My conclusion is that there is no special term for whale penis, and particularly not "dork". This is an interesting one, but there is no reliable source that claims that "dork" ever was anything than a meme / hoax / internet-era invention. Conclusion: the term for a whale's penis is: penis ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |