BY ANN BAAKO ’18

Duck penises are explosive. The corkscrew-shaped organs, which are normally hidden beneath a cavity at the end of a duck’s digestive tract, shoot out to as long as eight inches; within a third of a second, the male duck ejaculates its sperm into the female to complete what is usually a forced sexual encounter. Ninety-seven percent of male birds do not have penises at all (usually, the penis-less male mushes its genital opening with the female’s and transfers sperm into the female’s vagina in a maneuver known as the “cloacal kiss”). Because of how rare penises are in the bird world, duck penises have captured bird lovers’ attention. When the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is funded by American tax dollars, handed out a $384,949 grant to Patricia Brennan and her supervisor at Yale University to explore “plasticity in duck penis length,” online conservative news agencies exploded.