10 Things you probably didn’t

10 Things you probably didn’t know about, ahem… testicles

It’s Testicular Cancer Awareness Month – so why not brush up on your ball-sense?

10 Things you probably didn’t

Your nads, balls, family jewels, testes or whatever you might like to call them – testicles are a very interesting part of the male body and seeing as it is Testicular Cancer Awareness Month, the best time to get our facts straight, will be now. So, here’s ten interesting facts about balls:

  1. Testicles are masters when it comes to mass production and create about 200 million sperm a day.
  2. IFLScience reported that most testicles hang at different heights. For 65% of men the right one hangs higher and is found to be a little larger than the left.
  3. Of all species, those with the biggest testicles are said to be the tuberous bush cricket. Testicles account for about 14% of the insects body weight. Impressive!

    Theguardian.com: Behavioural ecologist Karim Vahed and a tuberous bush cricket, which has testes accounting for 14% of its body mass. Photograph: Richard Richards/AFP/Getty
    Theguardian.com: Behavioural ecologist Karim Vahed and a tuberous bush cricket, which has testes accounting for 14% of its body mass. Photograph: Richard Richards/AFP/Getty
  4.  The deeper the Howler monkeys call, the smaller their balls. Scientists found the deeper and louder their vocal calls, the smaller their testicles. IFLScience also reported that: “Those species with the deeper calls and smaller balls live in single male, multi-female groups. This means that he has less competition for mates, and so only needs to produce a limited amount of sperm. For the species that have less deep vocalizations, the opposite is true, in that the monkeys live in multi-male and multi-female groups.” Interesting…
  5. We all know testicles hang outside of the male body. This caters for their sensitivity to temperature as sperm survives best in a few degrees cooler than body temperature. Mammals on the other hand, have their kidneys tucked inside, near their kidneys.
  6. Sperm carries about 37 megabytes of DNA data.
  7. The word “avocado” derives form the Aztec word for testicle.
  8. The same goes for the word “orchid” which derived from the Greek word for testicle.
  9. Testicles contain more diverse protein than any other human organ. A project revealed that 77% of all human proteins are expressed in the testicles, and that these reproductive organs are home to 999 unique proteins. “Our most powerful and sophisticated organ, the brain, was found to host only around 318”.
  10. And now for an unconfirmed, but interesting theory: Metro reported that The Vatican museum contains a ‘dung chair’ – a chair with a hole in it. Some believed it was used by officials to check the sex of the new Pope and make sure he had both balls. BBC reported that the story “goes that the aim of the checks was to prevent a repeat of the scandal of “Pope Joan”, a legendary female cardinal supposedly elected pope in the 14th Century.”
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