Snakes have clitorises, scientists discover

In perhaps the most random development you’ll hear about today, scientists discovered that female snakes have clitorises.

In a study published yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers found that snakes have two individual clitorises, called hemiclitores. The hemiclitores are separated by tissue and hidden by the skin on the underside of the tail.

The study’s lead author Megan Folwell, a PhD student at the University of Adelaide, told News Scientist…

“There’s a lot known about male snake genitalia, but not so much—really anything, known about females.”

Folwell said that one possible factor in the lack of descriptions of snake clitorises is “a massive taboo around the female genitalia.”

Folwell started dissecting female snake specimens from the zoology collection at the University of Michigan to see if she could find snakes’ clitorises. She started peeling back the skin of a death adder, the triangular structure of the hemiclitoris, a two-part clitoris also found in lizards, was “shockingly obvious.”

More research is needed to find the sex organs’ exact function, however, the study suggests that they “have functional significance in mating” in snakes.

This is a significant development because, in the past, researchers assumed snake reproduction was mostly coercive, with males driving mating. But snakes’ courtship includes behaviours like rubbing and twisting tails together, which researchers say may stimulate the hemiclitores and make females more receptive to reproduction, Smithsonian reported.

Patricia Brennan, a researcher at Mount Holyoke College who worked with Folwell on the study, said this discovery could change the understanding of mating in snakes. She said it just goes to show “how much we’ve been missing by largely ignoring female anatomy.”

An academic at Australia’s Macquarie University, Richard Shine, said the new study is a “great leap forward” in our understanding of reptiles’ sexual anatomy.