As I give my fractured right wrist some time to heal up from a freak skateboarding accident (long story, but the operative word is “freak”), allow me to regale you with another festive story from my new book It Only Hurts When I Pee: RJ Ledesma’s Guide to Bodily Gases, Hair Loss and Pink Parts (now available in National Bookstore and Powerbooks), about a body part (actually body parts; most of the fun body parts come in twos) that has brought us so much joy not only this holiday season but throughout the year as well.
Let us talk about our testicles and ask the questions that nobody really wants to ask: Is bigger necessarily better? Is it true that, the bigger they are, the harder it is to walk?
Well, that depends. Are you a chimpanzee?
Before you visit Wikipedia to check on your standing in the evolutionary ladder, know that the average size of your family jewels should be about two inches long, an inch across and one-and-a-quarter inch in width. If you need help with a measuring tape, I can volunteer my yaya.
But a more arresting fact about our jingle balls is that, according to fertility specialist Dr. Robert Winston, the size of testicles can tell us a lot about a species’ sexual practices. In the ‘70s, British biologist Roger Short noticed something peculiar about ape anatomy. He found that chimpanzees had extremely large four-ounce testicles that produced prodigious amounts of sperm (although I am trying not to imagine how he found out that chimps produce prodigious amounts of sperm). Mating among chimps is fairly unregulated and casual affair especially since they are not being monitored by the MTRCB. In fact, there seems to be no awareness as to the paternity of any of their offspring.
Chimps live in polygamous groups where several males may share a female. And when a female chimp ovulates, she does a lot of monkeying around: they copulate up to 50 times a day with a dozen different males. But, according to The Anatomy of Love, the male chimps are quite tolerant of each other, even politely lining up for their turn (a practice you may also witness in many animal porn films. And even some human ones).
Since each male’s sperm is jockeying to fertilize the ovum, the more voluminous the spermatozoa one chimp produces over another, the better the chances that that chimp will become the father. So in this battle for the ovum, what was the best way for a chimp to win in sperm warfare? He had to stockpile enough sperm in his payload to make the North Koreans shudder. So chimps evolved larger and larger payloads for their DNA juice — in short, they got bigger, bolder and buko-sized testicles.
What have we learned so far about the chimpanzee’s mating habits so far? We have learned that somebody ought to teach these chimps some religion.
On the other hand, you have silverback gorillas. Silverback gorillas, the largest of the living primates, sport large canine teeth and a fierce growl that is enough to make human testicles retract to the pit of their stomachs. However, despite their large size and aggressive behavior, silverbacks have miniscule testicles. More miniscule, even, than those of some congressmen.
Unlike chimpanzees, silverback alpha males take possession of a harem of female gorillas. And silverbacks are secure in the knowledge that the female gorillas will rarely sneak off for an illicit romp in the wilds (unless they encounter a very brave and randy male chimpanzee). Gorillas rarely have intercourse, because for males with a harem, sexual access is guaranteed. Therefore, Mr. “I Am King of the Apes” only needed a small amount of sperm and, consequently, a small payload. So, gorillas evolved testicles that were small but terrible.
Now, let us put things into perspective: gorillas weigh four times as much as chimps, but chimps’ testicles weigh four times’ as much as a gorilla’s. What can we infer from this other than the fact than the fact that chimpanzees must be flashing their payloads and making belat (sticking out their tongue) at any silverbacks they encounter in the wild? Well, the biologist Roger Short appears to have stumbled — not on testicles, but rather on anatomical clues about a species’ mating system: the bigger the balls, the more polygamous the females.
Human testicles tread the middle ground when it comes to primate testicles. Measured as a proportion of body weight, our human teabags are four times the size of a gorilla’s but less than a third of the size of a chimpanzee’s. If this is the case, then how did we do our swinging way back when?
According to The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution of Human Nature, ancestral man probably lived in a pseudo-harem system, but he was also prepared for occasional female promiscuity. Ancestral females copulated with more than one male in a month fairly often. Given this, human males evolved testicles that were potent enough to combat a moderate amount of sperm competition from other males, but they certainly didn’t need to stockpile enough artillery as required by the chimpanzee gonads. This also explains why, aside from chimpanzees, human males can also expose their payloads and make belat at silverback gorillas in the wild.
Before you make your way to Manila Zoo for exposure, you might be wondering if you can find a way to further, ahem, enlarge your payload to make yourself more intimidating. Well, some men have actually tried testosterone injections.
In 1889, when a Harvard professor named Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard injected himself with a “rejuvenating elixir” consisting of the extract of dog and guinea pig testicles. Aside from growing a snout and licking his own testicles, Brown-Sequard reported no side effects to his little animal cocktail. Thankfully, the technology for injectable testosterone has greatly improved since then, as testosterone is now being synthesized from human testicles. And, yes, that is a step up from guinea pigs.
If you are able to live with the fact that you are being injected with hormones that have been synthesized from another man’s testicles, then bask in the ultimate glandular reward: studies have shown that prolonged exposure to higher than usual testosterone levels result in larger penises.
However, when you inject testosterone into your system, it apparently interferes with the natural stimulus to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus detects the testosterone and is bamboozled into thinking that this hormone is coming from the testes. So the befuddled hypothalamus reduces its activity and stops stimulating the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland makes tampo (sulks) and stops stimulating the testes. The testes, in turn, make tampo as well and punish you by going on a diet. In short, when you inject testosterone into your system, your testicles shrink as well.
This gives new meaning to the term “family jewels.”