Human evolution: erect penis design (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 18:36 (1339 days ago) @ David Turell

A necessary component of human life:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51253209_The_Functional_Morphology_of_Penile_E...

"Inflatable penises have evolved independently at least four times in amniotes, specifically in mammals, turtles, squamates, and the archosaurs. Males in these lineages therefore share the functional problem of building a penis out of soft and flexible tissues that can increase its flexural stiffness and resist bending during copulation. Research on penile erectile tissues in mammals and turtles shows that these two taxa have convergently evolved an axial orthogonal array of collagen fibers to reinforce the penis during erection and copulation; in both lineages, the collagen fibers in the array are crimped and folded in the flaccid penis. Collagen fiber straightening during erection increases the stiffness of the tissue and allows changes in penile radius that increase its second moment of area: both of these changes increase the flexural stiffness of the penis as a whole. And once erect, axial orthogonal arrays have the highest flexural stiffness of any fiber arrangement. The high degree of anatomical convergence (to the level of microanatomical features) within mammals and turtles suggests that the stiffness requirements for copulation produce an extremely restrictive selective regime in organisms that evolve inflatable penises.

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"Penile convergence in mammals and turtles does not stop at gross functional similarity; they have converged on a single anatomical design down to the level of specific collagen fiber arrangements. The differences in penile collagen fiber layering that exist between mammals and turtles do not, as of yet, seem to have any functional effect on penile stiffness. It may be that the way the axial orthogonal array is put together is less critical to the problem of increasing penile flexural stiffness than the presence of the array itself."

Comment: I've seen chimp erections in Africa. We certainly inherited the mechanism which is necessary for reproduction in our system. The complex design of the collagen fibers indicates they were designed.