Barnacles have penises eight times the size of their body
Jealous?
We’ve talked about elephants being able to scratch themselves with their penis. And how elephants have the largest penis of any land animal (100 cm or 39 in long if you’re wondering). But there’s technically one small animal that surpasses them in the dick measuring contest, depending on how you look at it.
Surprisingly, it’s barnacles - the sessile creatures that spend their lifetime being stuck to something.
And it’s being fused at one spot, that causes barnacles to have the longest penis in the animal kingdom relative to body size.
Being stuck in one location, doesn’t give barnacles many opportunities to do the deed. So having a super long penis, allows them to fertilise eggs within their reach. Barnacles can even use their penis to taste and smell for receptive partners.
The length and girth of their penis also depends on the motion of the ocean. In rough areas with heaps of waves, barnacles will have shorter and thicker penises. Whereas for those that live in calmer waters, their penises are longer and thinner for them to mate with as many partners as possible.
What’s even crazy, is that their length and thickness of their penis changes if their environment changes. So, if they need to adapt to their environment, they can literally shorten or lengthen the width and length of their penis. That’s pretty cool.
To top it all off, most barnacles are hermaphrodites, meaning they possess both male and female sex organs. They can fertilise each other and all their neighbours within reach. Worse comes to worst, they can even self-fertilise if needed (albeit very rarely).
What I do find pretty funny, is that these barnacles are also found on the faces of blue whales - the animals with the penis in the world (2.5 m or 8.2 ft long if you’re curious). I wonder if that’s intentional.