[Male health]: Why do almost all mammals have foreskins?

qarlap · 2024-12-19T20:27:47+00:00

I see your point with the animal comparison.

Various vertebrate penile sheaths are homologous (like phalanges of bird wing v. phalanges of mammalian hands). However humans are unique in several ways (such as language faculties) and this is just such an example.

While animal sheaths are prepuces, and the human foreskin is a prepuce, animal sheaths are not foreskin.

The difference is anatomical and biomechanical. In animals, the prepuce has its attachment site at the base of the penile shaft. The prepuce is not involved in intromission.

In contrast, the human foreskin uniquely has its attachment site right below the glans. It is a key part of human intromission, moving back and forth over the glans within a cavity during penetration (termed 'gliding action').

In fact, this accounts for why the human glans is uniquely large and bulbous (e.g. anatomical reference in UK English use of 'knob' or 'bellend'). Humans uniquely have a large glans with a retracting/protracting foreskin.

Finally, the main erogenous zones of the penis are all on the foreskin, with innervation by fine touch receptors / Meissner's corpuscles. The human glans is comparatively insensate, mainly capable of nociception (pain) and pressure with free nerve endings.

This is also in contrast to animals where the main erogenous zones are over the entire penile shaft or on the comparatively small and pointed glans.

Human males even have the specialized frenulum and other specialized organs like the ridged band of the foreskin. Their functions, like that of the foreskin, are specifically erogenous.

Often, dismissive or minimizing rhetoric (read 'pro-circumcision') focuses on the foreskin's protective functions. However, 'circumcision' shows us this is secondary to its primary and understated erogenous functions.

This further highlights its uniqueness and importance, more generally within the animal kingdom, but also specifically to Male sexual health and experience, wherein it is typically discounted.

BannanasAreEvil · 2024-12-19T18:09:42+00:00

Many things that are current in the human body exist because evolution takes forever.

We are born naked, yet we don't have as much hair as other mammals including our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. We've lost most of the hair on our bodies but still have pubic hair, and that hair usually only grows during puberty?

While we could point to "why" we probably have pubic hair we can see that it really doesn't provide any function to us any longer as we adapted to wearing clothing. Yet that adaption was only very recently in our evolutionary existence, for the longest time we wore furs if anything at all. Plus having pubic hair or not isn't stopping us from reproducing.

It could be that in another 10,000 or 100,000 years we may see things like pubic hair going away, as well as most of the hair on our bodies following suit. Yet at the same time we know that men have more body hair compared to women, again usually triggered during puberty. So their would have to be a subset of people being born with less hair and passing those genes on.

As far as the foreskin is concerned, anything to do with modern things cant be contributed to it needing to be around. Protecting the glans from our clothing is not a evolutionary trait, our foreskin existed before clothing so it wasn't brought about to protect the glans from clothing.

Evolution has no idea about eternal lubrication, if babies are being born then lubrication must be there.

To put pressure on evolution to make a change would mean that a trait that exists either has to make its way into the gene pool or out of it. Since we are all born with foreskin our bodies have those genes in it to keep passing it on. Now if some men where born without foreskin and they reproduced at a higher rate then those with foreskin then those genes would get passed on. In turn those genes would make their way through the gene pool and eventually its possible that foreskin would disappear.

My real point is, from an evolutionary standpoint we don't need foreskin, yet having it doesn't harm us either. We are reproducing just fine with or without it and its a surgery to remove it and therefore its not a gene that can be passed on for evolution to remove it.

To drive the point home, imagine a war breaks out and we are trapped in darkness now, we lost all technology because of whatever In this new world dangers exist because we can't see, people end up dying pretty easily because of falling off cliffs or whatever. Life expectancy rarely has people able to live long enough to produce more then 1 (if lucky) offspring before an accident happens taking them out. Survival is very difficult in this new world.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of years go by and a child is born with a mutation that allows HIM (important) to use echolocation. Suddenly hes able to effectively see, this mutation allows him to reproduce more then just once with more then just one woman. His offspring get this mutation too and they are able to reproduce more and suddenly 10s of thousands years later most of the population can use echolocation.

Then thousands and thousands and thousands of years go by and they have technology that allows them to light up their world. Their eyes regain thier previous ability because it wasn't absolute darkness. They have a version of the internet and all that. Somebody posts on a message board saying "this is why echolocation is important and not just a vegistal part of our body"

They list all the ways echolocation could be used if they didn't have all the modern things those people do. Like preventing people from falling off cliffs, or able to pick up utensils and even the nerves responsible for making those noises used for echolocation. Was echolocation important for those people 100s of thousands of years ago? Absolutely!! Is anything pressuring them to lose echolocation now that they have light, is it stopping them from reproducing because of it? No, so it's going to stay until a mutation makes its way though the population at a pace to remove it.

Archangel1313 · 2024-12-20T22:00:39+00:00

A lot of this information is contradictory in nature. How can the foreskin be for "protection" while also having enhanced sensitivity? Either it is a sensitive organ, or it is there to protect something more sensitive. Putting the sensitive part on the outside doesn't protect it...it puts it at risk. Especially if that part happens to dangle between the legs, where it can get casually caught up on things in the environment.

Title	[Male health]: Why do almost all mammals have foreskins?
Author	PQKN051502
Upvotes	50
Comments	23
Date	December 18, 2024 7:43 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1hh9utb/male_health_why_do_almost_all_mammals_have/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/male-health-why-do-almost-all-mammals-have.1538965 https://theredarchive.com/post/1538965

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