Men are freaked out after learning what ‘stitch’ running along bottom of scrotum is
There's really no way to tiptoe around this one, you saw the headline and already know by now this article is about your ballsack.
Namely, it's about the sort of scar thing you've got running along the underside of your scrotum. Don't worry, you're perfectly normal, everybody has one.
What you might not know is where it comes from, and that's what we're going to be talking about today in an attempt to teach you one of life's great mysteries.
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It could be a really helpful piece of information you need to know one day, or it could just join the pile of fairly useless trivia you've accumulated over your life and are always hoping comes up in a pub quiz but never will.
They say you learn something new every day, so here's today's offering.
Here's the science-y bit - all humans basically begin development from the same starting point but the further we go, the more distinct we become.
We all started off as a sperm and an egg (if you're reading this, never forget that you won a race at some point in your life, so well done there) and then kind of go from there based off our genetics and chromosomes.
Boy and girl embryos are pretty much indistinguishable until about nine weeks into the pregnancy, at which point they start developing their own personal set of privates.
This scar on the bottom of your balls, medically known as a Scrotal Raphe, forms during the development of the genitals.
The tissue in the babies where your goolies develop is the same and it's called labioscrotal swellings, it just develops into different things depending on whether the child has a Y chromosome or not.
For females, this tissue develops into the outer labia, whereas if the baby is male then the labioscrotal swellings will fuse together and develop into the scrotum, otherwise known as your trusty old ballsack.
And guys were pretty surprised to discover this little biological tidbit of trivia about themselves, although that's fair because we don't remember what goes on inside the womb.
Lots of men had their minds put at ease after worrying they were secretly 'two guys sewn into one', while someone else joked it meant 'the curtains are closed'.
Others were glad it wasn't secretly the scar from some horrible injury they don't remember having.
Someone else seemed pretty chuffed to learn it, boasting that they'd 'evolved into a further being' which isn't really what happens but they seemed happy to learn something.
Not to wax lyrical about the wonders of the scrotum or anything, but it is a very sophisticated part of the body.
The optimal temperature of your b*****ks is a few degrees below human body temperature and the scrotum helps regulate this, which is why your undercarriage is looser when it's warmer to avoid overheating and shrivels up into a sturdier structure when cold to try and maintain temperature.
There's also space for your testicles to hang at different heights which gives us all sorts of advantages, chief of which is avoiding the pain of having your balls squashed together all the time.
Hanging at different heights is also another factor which helps control the temperature, it really seems to be a temperature control bonanza down there.
That's quite enough talking b*****ks for one day.
Joe Harker