A MAN may have lived his whole life without ever realising he had three penises due to an ultra-rare condition. The 78-year-old British man donated his body to the University of Birmingham Medical School, where students discovered a “ remarkable anatomical variation ” as they dissected him. The man's genitals appeared normal from the outside, but further examination revealed he had two more small penises "stacked" inside his groin.
Medics described their "serendipitous discovery" in a paper submitted to the Journal of Medical Case Reports . According to the report, the man had triphallia , "a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of three distinct penile shafts". Being born with more than one penis - known as polyphallia - is "extremely rare", researchers stressed.
Read more on sexual health The condition only effects on in five to six million live births. Papers published between 1606 and 2023 contain a smattering of reports of diphalia, when someone has two penises. But triphalia has only been reported on once before, in a 3-month-old child who had extra glans growing out of the root of his penis and his scrotum.
This makes the 78-year-old man only the second known person to have been born with three members. Most read in Health What makes his case unusual is the fact that the penises were "concealed within the scrotal sac", so his genitals appeared normal from the outside. This probably explains why the man's triphallia wasn't spotted until after his death.
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