A British man, who died at the age of 78 and donated his body to the University of Birmingham Medical School for research, seems to have lived his entire life without knowing that he had three penises. The bizarre case came to light after the researchers conducted a dissection and discovered a “remarkable anatomical variation”.
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The man’s genitals, who was six feet tall, looked normal from the outside, but the dissection revealed he had two more penises within his groin.
“Two small supernumerary penises stacked in a sagittal orientation postero inferiorly to the primary penis. Each penile shaft displayed its own corpora cavernosa and glans penis. The primary penis and largest and most superficial of the supernumerary penises shared a single urethra, which coursed through the secondary penis prior to its passage through the primary penis. A urethra-like structure was absent from the smallest supernumerary penis,” researchers said in a paper submitted to the Journal of Medical Case Reports.
The researchers explained that the urethra initially formed in the secondary penis but shifted to the primary one when the secondary one failed to develop. “The urethra originally developed in the secondary penis, however, when this penis failed to develop, the urethra diverted its course and developed in the primary penis instead. The tertiary penis is a remnant of the triplicated genital tubercle.”
Being born with multiple penises, a condition known as polyphallia, is extremely rare, affecting approximately 1 in 5 to 6 million individuals. While research has documented instances of polyphallia from 1606 to 2023, triphalia – which essentially means ‘triple penis’ – has been reported only once before.
The paper also noted that the man “may have lived with functional deficits due to the abnormal anatomy of the region, which may include urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction, or fertility issues, as later described”.
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Genital development occurs between four to seven weeks of gestation, during which the penis forms from the genital tubercle, regulated by dihydrotestosterone (DHT): “Genetic abnormalities affecting the expression of androgen receptors may cause morphological genital abnormalities. In this case, there may have been triplication of the genital tubercle.”
The authors further said, “We cannot be certain that in this case the defect remained unnoticed in life…,” adding: “If the defect had been noticed during his life it may have simply been left untouched due to the apparent lack of symptoms and its benign nature.”
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