When University of Birmingham Medical School researchers discovered three penises in the corpse of a 78-year-old man who had apparently passed away unaware of the uncommon ailment, they were astounded. His genitals were six inches long and seemed normal from the outside, but upon closer inspection, scientists found two tiny penises within his scrotal sac, one of which was attached to the same urethra as the main penis. This information was reported by the Independent.

“Two small supernumerary penises stacked postero inferiorly to the primary penis in a sagittal orientation.” Each penile shaft had a distinct glans penis and corpora cavernosa. One urethra, which passed through the secondary penis before passing through the principal penis, was shared by the primary penis and the biggest and most superficial of the supernumerary penises. The tiniest supernumerary penis lacked a structure resembling the urethra, according to study published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.

The urethra first developed in the secondary penis, but when the secondary one failed to mature, the researchers said, it moved to the major penis. The urethra initially originated in the secondary penis, but it changed course and evolved in the main penis when the secondary penis failed to mature. The vestige of the triplicated genital tubercle is the tertiary penis.

Diphallia, the disorder when a male baby is born with two penile shafts, is said to affect one in six million male newborns.

An even more uncommon genetic condition called triphallia results in a male infant having three separate penile shafts. Only one such instance was previously documented, in a 2020 Iraqi infant.