Some time ago a series of photographs began to circulate on the Internet in which what appeared to be a frog with a penis of quite striking size in relation to its body was seen. An Australian man had found it in his own garden and had circulated the images without quite knowing what it was.
And it is that, in reality, frogs do not have a penis. Instead, they have an organ called the cloaca, which can be found in both males and females. The cloaca serves as a channel for the expulsion of waste, sperm or the eggs themselves. In it the digestive, reproductive and excretory systems converge and all amphibians, reptiles, birds, sharks and rays have one.
Commonly, these animals reproduce through a process called amplexus , an embrace of the male to the female in which fertilization of the eggs takes place outside the body, unlike mammals. Amphibians that reproduce in this way are called anurans.
During amplexus, which takes place in water , females undergo a series of contractions that stimulate the male and help release the eggs. The male spills the sperm on them and they end up united by a kind of gelatinous mass.
The only anuran amphibians that do have a tail are that of the genus Ascaphus and this, in reality, is nothing more than an extension of the cloaca that allows them to fertilize internally, preventing the sperm from spilling into the water.
So, what is it that you see in the photographs that protrudes from the body of that Australian frog? As Gerry Marantelli of the Australian Center for Amphibian Research explained in statements to Buzzfeed News, the conspicuous bulge could quite possibly be a “partially formed extra leg .” A third leg. Worth the metaphor.
