Hyena Ladyboners and why Evolution is Weird

As a biology student I love talking about weird phenomena in nature, as an atheist I love talking about how intelligent design is infeasible, and as an immature man-child I love talking about genitals. Occasionally these loves come together in harmonious union. In this case I am talking about the female spotted hyena, and how you wouldn't know it was female for the 7 inch shaft hanging between its legs.

Max didn't want to post pictures of penis-like objects in Friday's sex toy post. Lucky for you, I have no such qualms

 The mechanism by which this occurs is a fascinating example of how evolutionary fitness can come at a cost. As anyone who has seen hyenas can attest, they can be pretty vicious, and life in the African Savannah can be pretty unforgiving. In such a dog eat dog world (Puns!) being of an aggressive nature is an incredible advantage. So pregnant hyenas give their pups bursts of androgens in utero; androgens being a class of steroidal hormones closely associated with aggression in animals.

However, this advantage comes with a catch. The androgen family of steroids includes testosterone, which I'm sure you're familiar with as the hormone that makes men especially manly. When the fetal hyenas happen to be female however, it makes them somewhat manly as well; causing the elongation of the clitoris into this 7 inch pseudopenis, along with two flaps of skin that were once labia fusing to resemble a scrotum.

It's a trap?

 Now at this point you might be wondering "Hey, this is cool and all, but what does it have to do with the intelligent design you mentioned before?" Well, it has everything to do with the biological costs of those androgens being released. When I say that the androgen exposure causes some problems, I don't mean something minor like it now has to worry about tripping over itself. With the shift in the reproductive morphology, it makes the mating process incredibly complex, and the childbirth (described as "tortuous") involving the stretching and eventual tearing of the clitoris in order to permit birth.

So when you put the hyena's girly girth alongside ID's view that every adaptation is divinely inspired, that celestial designer starts to look pretty inept. The hyena's pseudopenis only makes sense when you consider it as an evolutionary balancing act between the advantages it gives (aggressive young with high chance of reproductive success) and the disadvantages its byproducts cause. As long as an adaptation gives a higher net chance of passing on its genes, then it will propagate, even if it causes faux phalluses in the process. As their divine designer must be infallible by his nature, intelligent design simply cannot account for phenomenon such as these, and thus cannot be considered a valid explanation for the variety of life found on this earth.