A study of ophidian clitorises suggests snakes are highly sexed

Female genitalia of all species, included, have long been overlooked by biologists. This may reflect a past tendency for biologists to be male. No longer. Biology has become an equal-opportunity discipline and that history of oversight is being corrected. A study released in October, for example, showed that the human clitoris is more richly innervated than thought. Now it is the turn of female snakes to have their genitalia scrutinised.This latest investigation is by Megan Folwell, a herpetologist at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. She challenges previous wisdom that the clitorises of reptiles in general, and snakes in particular, are vestiges there merely to stimulate males, rather than stimulating the female in any way. Ms Folwell, a doctoral candidate, took as the thesis for her thesis, as it were, that this belief is snake oil.