It’s commonly accepted wisdom that the female form is glorious, true beauty and a gorgeous thing to behold. The male form on the other hand…. Well, it’s just not as pretty. Men might be super proud of their nether regions, erecting statues to their beloved leaders that are winking nods toward their members, but when Mother Nature takes control, things in nature that look like a penis aren’t quite as artful.

A naked man looks a lot like a poorly decorated Christmas tree, with weird things dangling where they don’t look like they ought to.

Then again, maybe this is nature’s way of keeping the human animal in line, keeping the battles between the sexes a little more even-handed (considering men think men run the world, whereas women know women do)

Trees

Like the infinite number of Shakespeare-writing monkeys, if you grow enough trees odds are some of them are going to end up looking like other things. Like wangs, for example. Frankly anything longer than it is wide can be turned into a phallic symbol with just a bit of imagination, so it might happen that phallic branches occur more often than, say, ones that look like a spiral-cut ham.

Sometimes nature will give a tree wood all by itself, and sometimes people will help it along. Take British tree surgeon Chris Bishop, who earns a living trimming other people’s bushes, and spent three years pruning a Cypress tree in front of his own house into a 5.5 metre (18 foot) dong. His reason? To amuse the neighbors.

Source: Man crafts huge 18ft PENIS-shaped tree in front garden in bid to make people laugh

Worms

So even the most innocent worm looks a lot like a penis, but the phylum Priapulida are so phallic, they’re named after Priapus, the Greek fertility god and protector of livestock, gardens and make genitalia.

He had a permanent erection, which is where we get the medical term priapism, which is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. But anyway: the worms.

The Priapulida, which are usually just called “penis worms” (not making this up), mostly live in shallow water and mud.

These days they’re pretty harmless little things, but the fossil record shows that they had some pretty interesting ancestors.

About half a billion years ago, in the Cambrian era, there were early carnivorous penis worms who could turn their mouths inside out so that they could drag themselves around by their teeth in search of fresh meat. Fortunately these little horror-shows were only the size of a finger, so their meals were mostly things like shrimp, other worms, and various tiny sea creatures. But still…ew.

Source: Ancient Penis Worms

Peppers

It’s unclear who decided these members of the Capsicum chili pepper species should be called the Peter Pepper, but we like them already. Some call it the chili willy, which is also good, while others just call it the penis pepper, which frankly lacks imagination, however accurate it might be.

It’s long and tubular, with a bulbous end. It really does look like a penis, albeit one with a terrible sunburn.

They’re kind of rare, probably because what supermarket’s going to carry peppers that look very much like sleek red knobs? If you want some, you’ll either need to grow them yourself or hope there’s a local farmer with a sense of humor you can get some from.

You’ll be glad you tried it, though, because they’re a damn fine chili. They rate between 10,000 and 23,000 Scoville heat units, making them about 9 times as spicy as a jalapeno, but roughly the same as a serrano. It’s a bit sweeter, though. Still, you want to be careful about how you handle them. Don’t go getting its juice where you might regret it.

For those who think size matters, the average length of a Peter Pepper is between 4 and 6 inches.

Source: Go Ahead and Laugh

Snakes

Where oh where do we even begin with this one? The Atrechoana eiselti was, for the longest time, only known through very old specimens preserved in jars. But then some engineers were draining a dam in Brazil and found six of them wriggling around at the bottom of the river like big, wrinkly pricks. Since then, more have been found in the Amazon area.

They’re commonly called the penis snake, but more silver-tongued types have also dubbed them the floppy snake, or our favorite, the manaconda.

Here’s what we know about them. They are blind (not even one eye like its relative the trouser snake). They have no limbs. They’re big (like, 1 metre or 3 foot 4 inches long). They are predatory. They are not actually snakes, but are amphibians. And they have no lungs.

Wait, what? So how to they breathe? Well, for help answering that we need to take a look at another wrinkly-skinned amphibians, the Titicaca Water Frog. And if you still find the name Titicaca amusing, you’re gonna love this: the Titicaca Water Frog is also known as the scrotum frog. For reasons that are totally in line with why the A. eiselti is called the penis snake.

The scrotum frog lives its whole life underwater, mostly in Lake Titicaca, breathing through its skin. All those wrinkles help increase the surface area of its skin, so it can absorb more oxygen from the surrounding water. We think it’s the same deal with the shrivelly penis snake.

Naturally, the question that needs to be answered is what would happen if you put a penis snake and a scrotum frog together. Well, since the frogs do grow to the size of dinner plates one wouldn’t look that out of place alongside its 3 foot priapic friend. Scary, but appropriate.

Sources: Penis Snake , Scrotum Frog

Cacti

When it comes to cacti you can take your pick of ones that look like a penis. Most have a roughly phallic shape to them, and a great number of different varieties can, through luck or happenstance or horticultural skill, end up resembling a plonker quite strikingly. To the great delight of giggly 12 year-olds everywhere (as well as those of us who never really developed a sense of humor past the age of 12), they sometimes even grow a pair of smaller, roundish cacti at the bottom.

Or if you don’t like to take chances, you can go for ones that pretty much always look like a penis. Depending on how big you like it, you can have the penis cactus, or the big penis cactus.

The penis cactus is properly called Echinopsis bridgesii forma mostruosa inermis, but is also known as the penis plant, San Pedro penis, the pornographic cactus, or if you’re really cultured you can use the German name Frauenglück, which translates as the optimistic “women’s pleasure.” And since it usually only grows to about 10 cm (4 inches), with half of it covered in long spines — a literal prick — it’s very optimistic.

Its larger relative is called the big penis cactus, or Lophocereus schottii. It doesn’t have a lot of nicknames, because honestly, how are you going to do better than big penis cactus? This monster can grow up to 7 m high (23 feet), which makes us wonder: what do the Germans call this?

Sources: Penis , Big Penis

Monkeys

A lot of people go to Borneo to see the orangutans, but they’re missing out if they don’t also try to sneak a peek at the wacky proboscis monkey, too. These characters give penis-lovers a double-whammy, because not only do the males have the most phallic nose this side of Owen Wilson, but they are always sporting a bright red, sweaty erection. Apparently, the sweat helps get rid of all the sodium they pick up in the salty mangrove forests where they live.

The males with the best, er, noses, get to hang out with a harem of around 20 females, and spend the day showing off their strength and prowess by breaking branches and generally acting like the alpha male they are, to which the females grumble their adoration. Meanwhile, the other males hang around together and probably play X Box and grumble their bitterness or something. All while trying not to stare at each other’s sweaty red boners.

Source: The Wildly Bizarre Proboscis Monkeys Of Borneo!

Mushrooms

In the autumn, you may enjoy a nice stroll outside when you come across something that smells like rotting meat and looks like a wang poking up from a pile of compost. Lucky you, you’ve found a stinkhorn mushroom, the Phallus impudicus.

These remarkable things can grow from nothing to height of 25 cm (10 inches) in just few hours. While that might be slower than an excited teenaged boy on a warm day at the beach, it’s still impressive for a fungus.

Most mushrooms reproduce by spreading their spores on the wind, but this phallic fungus needs a little help, er, getting off. That’s why it smells so bad. The stink attracts bugs, which land on its, er, head, and pick up the spunk, I mean spores, and carry them off to grow a new mushroom somewhere else.

Mercifully, these things are pretty harmless, apart from the smell, and only live a few days before shriveling up like a frightened teenaged boy on a cold day at the beach.

There are other stinkhorns, some of which also look like a penis, but perhaps not a human one. Take, for example the Mutinus elegans. Some call it the “elegant stinkhorn,” but a better nickname is the “dog stinkhorn,” because there is distinctive canine bent to its phallic nature. The best nickname for this mushroom has to be “the devil’s dipstick.”

Sources: Common Stinkhorn , Dog Stinkhorn

More Mushrooms

Connoisseurs of the magic mushroom speak in hushed tones about the penis envy mushroom, a strong strain of the Psilocybe cubensis that is notoriously difficult to propagate but, so they say, well worth the effort.

It also looks like a penis, hence the name.

The true aficionado looks for the even rarer hybrid of the penis envy, the stark white albino penis envy!

You probably think I am making this up, or that I’m tripping or something, but I assure you, I could not make this up.

Source: Penis Envy , Albino Penis Envy

Mollusk

Panopea generosa is a bivalve mollusk. A clam. That looks like a penis. And is extremely tasty.

It’s commonly called the geoduck, which is pronounced like “gooey duck” and comes from a native American word which means genitals.

The phallic part is the clam’s siphon, which normally grow a metre (3.3 feet) long, but have been seen to reach twice that. Its main body is in the shell part, which unfortunately doesn’t much look like your scrotum. (If it does, please see a doctor soon.)

Fun facts: it’s the biggest burrowing clam in the world, and one of the longest living animals with an average life span (if not eaten first) of about 140 years.

The taste has been called savory and its texture crunchy. It’s popular in China, where many consider it an aphrodisiac.

Source: Geoduck

More trees.

Travelers in Costa Rica can often be heard giggling as they pass the huacrapona palm tree. The locals use the wood to make excellent floors and canoes, and eat the spongy core. They’ll also take the roots and mix them with wine and honey and bury them in the ground for a week before eating those as a supposed aphrodisiac.

If you can’t guess why by now, you really haven’t been paying attention.

Properly known as Iriartea deltoidea, it’s also called in the vernacular the cock tree or penis tree, because its stilt roots grow down from above the surface of the ground like huge phallic appendages.

Apparently, they are sometimes used for female masturbation.

Source: Penis Palm