This image will probably shake you to the core – but it’s not what you think.
A photo shared by a Facebook user in Australia last week appears to show a frog with a disturbingly huge penis.
This is what it looks like:
The amphibious tripod went viral after Australian Keith Leech uploaded photos of it to Facebook.
But in news that may reassure you, this isn’t actually a frog with a giant penis. Although the photos tell a different story, frogs don’t actually have penises, and this protruding appendage is actually – quite literally – a third leg.
What the frog
Posted by Keith Leech on Wednesday, May 4, 2016
While it’s impossible to know what the growth truly is without seeing it first-hand, Gerry Marantelli from the Australian Amphibian Research Centre believes the extra leg theory to be the most likely.
She told Buzzfeed News:
It’s not a penis, frogs don’t have them, but penises did evolve from ‘legs’ during embryonic development so an extra leg is part way there.
Amphibians in one way likely invented the penis (albeit not the modern one).
Tail frogs are actually an example of this early evolving penis/leg.
Males of this extremely primitive frog species evolved with an extension from their reproductive tract to funnel sperm, and they still have it today.
They don’t look quite as cool as the one Keith found, though.
