Have you ever thought about how stupid is to have your testicles hanging down there ?

Consider:
  1. They stick to your legs when you sweat
  2. They are easily kicked or otherwise damaged
  3. They are suspended by a weak ligament (plus assorted tubing) that can stretch, get inflamed and lead to all sorts of grief.

Now, a physiologist will say "Sure, but they have to be there because if the temperature is beyond 34 Celsius the spermatozoids die". Now, this is like saying that Windows crashes because otherwise the BSOD would have no purpose and little Billy from Family Circus, the BSOD programmer, would cry: kind of ass-backwards if you ask me.

If you had to design balls, would you not put them behind a nice thick bone, or at least deep in the body, like ovaries?

But no, there they are, your only hope of reproduction (or rather, your only two hopes thereof), exposed to a cruel, ball-eating world.

On the other hand, balls are hardly unique: the gallbladder, the appendix, and the thymus (whose only function in your adult life is to get cancerous) share with balls the dubious honour of being more trouble than necessary.

On the other hand: One hangs lower than the other to prevent crushing; the skin forming the scrotal sac can actually thicken to protect them (and does during coitus in order to keep them from jostling each other); they can be retracted back into the body using either voluntary or involuntary muscle; and if you have a big enough Johnson, a kick to the groin may be harmlessly absorbed by said Johnson, which does not have many pain receptors. It's also hard to kick someone in the nuts from behind, since the thighs get in the way, although if you just stick your foot far enough forward your shin will do the job.

Even so... The human brain is aided by extra blood vessels which help regulate internal temperature. The doodads could easily be located in a more protected area, and kept cool if there were enough blood vessels to regulate the heat.

There's a plausible theory that the testes are carried outside the body not to protect them from the elevated core body temperature but instead to protect them from elevated pressures in the abdominal cavity caused by vigorous movement (kind of like when you tense your muscles to defecate if you'll pardon me saying so). The temperature-sensitivity would result from having evolved for optimal sperm production at the lowered external temperature. I don't know details of this theory as it was just mentioned in passing by a colleague.

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