A Brazilian cave insect has done a most unusual sex-role reversal, a new study finds: Females have penises, and males have vaginas.
All four known species of the genus Neotrogla in Brazil have this anatomy, which has not been seen in any other animal, said Rodrigo Ferreira, a cave biologist at the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil and an author of the study, in the journal Current Biology.
“We were completely shocked,” he said.
The female’s penislike organ, called the gynosome is erectable and inflates inside of the male’s vagina. Copulation lasts a very long time — 40 to 70 hours — and sperm is transferred from the male to the female.
Read the full, original story: For These Females, No Such Thing as Penis Envy
