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All sex facts / The animal kingdom

The female spotted hyena has a phallus

She urinates, mates and gives birth through the same organ.

The female spotted hyena has a phallus — Photo: Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The female spotted hyena has an enlarged clitoris around seventeen centimetres long, externally almost indistinguishable from the male's penis, and a fused false scrotum. She has no external vaginal opening. Urination, copulation and birth all happen through the phallus.

It makes mating physically impossible without her cooperation — the male cannot achieve anything by force — and it makes first births dangerous: the canal tears, and a substantial share of firstborn cubs do not survive. Spotted hyena clans are female-dominated, and the anatomy is thought to be a side effect of the androgen levels that come with it.

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General information, not medical advice. Anything persistent or painful belongs with a doctor, who has heard it before.