A 78-year-old man donated his body to science, revealing a rare case of triphalia—three penises. Researchers discovered the anomaly during dissection, noting the external genitalia appeared normal, but two additional penises were located within his groin. This extremely rare condition has only been documented once before.
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. When the researchers performed a dissection and found a "remarkable anatomical variation," the strange situation became apparent. 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.
According to the experts, the urethra first developed in the secondary penis but moved to the major one when the latter failed to mature. The urethra first formed in the secondary penis, but it changed its path and began to develop in the primary penis when the secondary penis failed to develop. A vestige of the triplicated genital tubercle is the tertiary penis.
The exceedingly unusual disorder known as polyphallia, which affects around 1 in 5 to 6 million people, is having numerous penises from birth. Although studies have recorded cases of polyphallia from 1606 to 2023, triphalia, which literally translates to "triple penis," has only been observed once.
Due to the region's aberrant structure, the guy "may have lived with functional deficits, which may include urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction, or fertility issues, as later described," the research added.