A MAN’S BODY
Talking about man’s reproductive system you know what is on the outside of a man’s body between his legs. In this case imagine he is leaning back rather than lying flat. At the front of his body you can see pubic hair, then under that is his penis. Penises come in a range of sizes, and can look quite small when they are in their normal state. By ‘normal’, we mean when they are not aroused, but are soft and hanging loosely. They have a shaft that is several centimetres long, which starts at the lowest part of a man’s abdomen and ends with a sort of bulb-shaped part that is called the glans. The glans has a different type of skin to the shaft, it is more sensitive, and at the tip of the glans is a little opening to the urethra. Urine, or wee, comes out of here when a man goes to the toilet.
When a baby boy is born he has a fold of skin covering the glans. This is called the foreskin. It is open at the end, just beyond the tip of the glans, so that the opening to the urethra is not covered. The foreskin can be pulled back when the penis is washed, and it moves back to expose the more sensitive skin of the glans when the man has sex. A penis that has a foreskin is said to be uncircumcised.
Some men have been circumcised. That means that their foreskin has been removed. Usually this is done by a doctor, or by a religious elder, when the baby is very young. In some cultures it is done at puberty. Occasionally a man may need to be circumcised later in life for medical reasons.
When a man becomes sexually excited, or ‘turned on’, his penis becomes erect, which means it gets harder and larger. When a man has an erection, it is difficult to tell if he has been circumcised or not because the foreskin pulls back to expose the glans. The penis gets harder and larger because blood flows to spongy tissue in the penis and fills it. The passage from the bladder that carries urine is blocked off so that when he ejaculates, or comes, only semen, which is the fluid containing sperm, is released.
Directly behind the penis is a loose bag of skin called the scrotum. Inside the scrotum are the two testes, or balls, that produce sperm. Sometimes the scrotum hangs loosely, and sometimes it scrunches up tightly close to the body. This generally depends on how the man is built It can also happen because sperm need to be kept at a certain temperature to live, and so when it is hot, the testes may be kept cooler by hanging more loosely away from the body, and when it is cold, they can move up close to keep warmer.
Behind the scrotum, towards the back of the body is an opening, which is the man’s anus. Faeces, or waste from the bowel, comes out here when the man goes to the toilet.
Now let’s look inside the man’s body. This shows the man’s body from the side. Perhaps it would be best to start with sperm production. Look at the testes inside the scrotum. They are about the size of walnuts and are made up of tightly coiled tubes where sperm and hormones are produced from puberty onward. Sperm are really tiny and you can only see them if you use a microscope. You may have heard of testosterone. This is one of the hormones produced in the testes. It is involved in producing male characteristics such as body hair and a deep voice.
Along the back to the top of each testis is the epididymis. The epididymis stores more mature sperm waiting to be fed into the vas deferens when they are needed. The vas deferens is usually just called the vas. One vas leads away from each testis. They are long and narrow and carry sperm to the urethra. The vas loop around the bladder and as they feed into the prostate gland the sperm mix with semen, which is fluid from the seminal glands. The prostate is also where the part of the urethra that is connected to the bladder can be closed off, so that only semen is released when a man ejaculates.
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Tags: Women’s Health