Relationships

The Weird Way Dolphin Penises Fit In Dolphin Vaginas During Sex Will Blow Your Mind

Liliya Rodnikova

Sex is already weird as hell, and I thought it was hard enough trying to figure out where all the body parts should go. (And figuring out where they SHOULDN'T go, you feel me?)

But if you thought human sex was complicated, prepare to be mind-blown about how dolphins have sex, as it's really peculiar, but strangely mystifying.

According to Dara Orbach, a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and a research assistant at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, "a fair bit is known about male reproductive organs." However, there's apparently much less information about female dolphins' reproductive organs.

Well, scientists couldn't have that (likely because #girlpower), so they inflated a deceased dolphin's penis and inserted it inside another deceased dolphin's vagina to really figure out how dolphins do ~the sex.~

(Yes, this is getting super weird now, so let's move on.)

Apparently, marine mammals are known for having pretty twisty vaginas, which is likely so they can have sex under water without getting sea water in their uteri.

Thank God they don't have to put in tampons, though, because LOOK HOW COMPLICATED THIS LOOKS:

Dara Orbach/Dalhousie University

Basically, that red matter is a dolphin penis, and it looks like a terrifying slab of raw meat. The grey matter to the left is the crazy folds of a dolphin vagina.

Orbach and her fellow researchers found that, for a male dolphin to successfully fertilize a female dolphin, his penis first has to get through all the twists and turns before making it to the female's uterus.

So yes, that means this giant mass of weird dolphin penis has to make it all the way to that teeny, tiny dolphin vagina all the way on the left.

Robert Lang

"We think that the positioning of the bodies of the males and females are hugely important in terms of the amount of fertilization success," said Orbach.

And according to Live Science, given the complicated shape of their vagina, a female dolphin could keep a male from inseminating her just by shifting her body a little bit and making the already complicated path even more difficult.

The grace of a woman, with the power of Gandalf: YOU SHALLLLLL NOTTTTT PAAAASSSSSSSS!

Dolphin girl power at its finest.

Warner Bros. Television

Scientists still have much more to learn about how different mammals' genitals fit together, which is why there's literally an entire field of study dedicated to figuring out how mammal P-in-V works, and it's called "copulatory fit."

In the meantime, though, I'm going to pray to the genitalia gods whenever I'm on my period that I don't ever have to fit a tampon inside a dolphin vagina.

Citations: How Dolphins Do It in Water…with Weird, Complex Genitalia (Live Science)