Not one person appeared to have a response. The difficulty try, the average bird-dissection strategy focused 
almost found on a man. When boffins did dissect a woman duck, they sliced the whole way upwards from the sides of your own pussy to get to the brand new jizz-storage tubules close to the womb (when you look at the wild birds, it’s known as layer gland), distorting its correct structure. It tossed the others away, unexamined. When she requested Birkhead what the within a female duck’s reproductive area looked like, she recalls, the guy believed it absolutely was similar to every other bird: an easy pipe.
But she knew there was not a chance a keen appendage while the complex and you may unusual as duck manhood could have progressed to your its own. Should your manhood was indeed an extended corkscrew, the new pussy should really be a similarly advanced framework.
The initial step would be to get some females ducks. Brennan and her husband drove over to one of several related facilities and you will bought a few Pekin ducks, and that she euthanized versus service toward a beneficial bale regarding hay. (Brennan’s husband is utilized to the sort of journeys: “He brings me personally roadkill as an excellent nuptial current,” she says.) In the place of cutting the latest reproductive area in the sides, she invested circumstances carefully peeling out the fresh new structures, level because of the covering, “such as for example unwrapping a gift.” Sooner, an elaborate contour came up: twisted and you can mazelike, which have blind alleys and invisible compartments.
Whenever she displayed Birkhead, both of them performed a dual-need. He had never seen things want it. He called an associate when you look at the France, a world specialist towards duck reproductive physiology, and questioned your in the event the he’d ever heard of those structures. The guy had not. The latest colleague visited view one of is own individual women specimens, and claimed straight back the same: an “extraordinary snatch.”
In order to Brennan, it featured that girls were responding somehow in order to men, and you may vice versa. However, there was something odd going on: the genitals twisted in the contrary recommendations of male’s. This basically means, which genitals appeared to has developed to not match the penis, however, to avert they. “I did not tie my lead to they. I simply couldn’t,” Brennan claims. She managed the brand new structures in containers regarding formaldehyde and you can spent days flipping him or her over, racking your brains on just what you will definitely describe its difficulty.
That is when she first started considering argument. Ducks tended to partner for around a season. But not, most men lurked in the wings, ready to harass and you may install one matched ladies they could score its hands on. That it may lead to a violent struggle, where males injure or even block the feminine. In a number of species, to forty percent of the many matings try pushed.
So it story out of argument, Brennan guessed, may possibly profile duck genitalia. “Which was new area in which I was instance: holy cow,” she says. “If that is most going on, this really is nuts.” She come getting in touch with boffins all over North and you may South america to gather a lot more specimens. You to is actually Kevin McCracken, good geneticist in the College or university out of Alaska exactly who, when you’re out on an effective wintry jaunt, had located this new longest known bird phallus with the Argentine river duck, and this unraveled to help you a stunning 17 in. He advised one even the men are addressing girls liking-wink-wink, nudge-nudge-however, hadn’t annoyed to really consider the female.
When Brennan titled your right up, he had been more than prepared to let their gather a lot more specimens. Now, he admits one perhaps the reason he hadn’t felt thinking about the feminine side of things try due to their own male prejudice. “It absolutely was fitted you to definitely a lady used that it up,” he says. “We failed to you desire a man to get it done.”