[W]hen I visited the Memphis Zoo, and saw they had tapirs, I
hastened the family over to see them. Imagine my mortification.
This bull tapir had an organ that was so prodigious it dragged
the ground. Not only that, it had three splines, or outgrowths,
that made it resemble some sort of medieval weapon, like a
morning star or something. It was incredibly repulsive, and so I
covered the little girls' eyes, and whisked them away to see the
1 day old baby giraffe, who could not yet stand up of its own.
The horror! Sex in the animal world! Madness. But that's not my
point. My point is that rodent phalli, like those at the right,
are bizarre. These are from Agouti paca, a South American
rodent. The illustrations are from Emmet Hooper, The Glans Penis
in the Genus Proechimys and other Caviomorph Rodents (1961).
Now, repulsive is a strong word, but we're talking some serious
spines there. In the classic Sexual Selection And Animal
Genitalia by William G. Eberhard, this illustration is captioned
(from memory) “It is d