Even in death, one man was well-endowed three times over.
Medical students from the University of Birmingham Medical School had discovered a rare instance where a man had three penises while examining a body that had been donated for scientific research.
According to the Journal of Medical Case Reports, the discovery was made after the dissection of the body of a 78-year-old man.
The dead man had a rare condition called triphallia, a genetic anomaly where males are born with three distinct penile shafts. The only other reported case of triphallia was linked to a baby born in Iraq in 2020.
The medical journal noted one in 6 million babies are born with diphallia in which they have two penile shafts. With only 100 cases recorded in the last 400 years, triphallia is even rarer.
The recent discovery marked the first time the condition was found in an adult, leading the medical students to suspect the prevalence of men with three penises “may be greater than expected.”
In the case of the 78-year-old man, it’s believed he wasn’t aware of his genitalia abnormality.
During the dissection, researchers found two smaller penises within the man’s scrotum, of which one was connected to the same urethra as the main penis.
“Without dissection, this anatomical variation would have remained undiscovered, suggesting the prevalence of polyphallia may be greater than expected,” researchers said in the report. “Despite normal appearance of external genitalia on examination, the dissection of a 78-year-old white male revealed a remarkable anatomical variation: two small supernumerary penises.”
The third penis — the smallest one found in the scrotal sac — was missing a urethra.
Such abnormalities may create a risk of infection or sexual or fertility dysfunction, said researchers.