Jan 15, 2007 12:31 PM

Mystery Body Part of the Day: The Hymen

The hymen: What’s it all about? In a classic The Straight Dope that’s being highlighted on the feature’s website this month, answer man Cecil Adams claims that nobody knows. Other than making first-time sex painful, the hymen doesn’t appear to have an obvious function in humans or other animals: It occurs in horses, whales, moles, […]

The hymen: What's it all about?

In a classic The Straight Dope that's being highlighted on the feature's website this month, answer man Cecil Adams claims that nobody knows. Other than making first-time sex painful, the hymen doesn't appear to have an obvious function in humans or other animals:

It occurs in horses, whales, moles, mole-rats, hyenas, and perhaps otheranimals. (In the great fin whale, in fact, the hymen is not completely destroyed untilchildbirth.) Why? We haven't got a clue. "Such adaptations [i.e., retention of thehymen] are explicable only if the male of the species finds it to his advantage to seek avirgin," Bettyann Kevles observes in Female of the Species (1986). "Butthere is no evidence that mammal males seek inexperienced females, and no evidence thatfemales with this peculiar anatomical feature remain monogamous.... In whales, one canexplain the resealing of the vagina as a means of keeping water out of the reproductiveorgans."

The Straight Dope column is from way back in 1992. Anyone know if medical science has shed any more light on the hymen since then?

What is the purpose of the hymen? [The Straight Dope]

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