What is the evolutionary use of the clitoris?

A clitoris is a useful tool for arousal. That is not only tasty, but probably also useful.

Source: Quest - Elly Posthumus - Published on: 25/03/2022

The clitoris is a lot bigger than you might think. It was not until 1998 that Australian urologist Helen O'Connell was the first to perform a comprehensive map of the entire organ. The small pink button that you can discover on the outside between a woman's legs, also called the lustrous clitoris, branches and widens under the skin.

The clitoris extends internally about ten centimeters obliquely backwards towards the vagina and buttocks. The largest part of the clitoris is therefore hidden under fatty tissue and bone. The organ consists of the same spongy tissue as the penis.

Clitoris swells during good sex

If you stimulate the clitoris in a pleasant way, the brain sends signals to the blood vessels that then supply the clitoris with blood. The spongy tissue swells considerably with that excitement, just like a penis.

At the same time, body muscles tighten, especially those near the clitoris and those of the clitoris and vagina itself. At the peak, these muscles suddenly contract rhythmically, and as a woman you experience an orgasm. Then the blood drains out of the clitoris again.

Swollen clitoris prevents infections

Just because of this pleasure you can say: the clitoris is an extremely useful organ. But there's more going on. For example, O'Connell suspects that the action of the clitoris prevents bladder infections after sex. The internal part of the organ runs next to the end of the urethra. Because the tissue of the clitoris swells up considerably when you become aroused as a woman, it compresses the urethra, according to the urologist. As a result, all kinds of bacteria cannot enter the urethra during sex.

Orgasm keeps sperm inside

The clitoris would also be functional for reproduction, even though a female orgasm is not necessarily necessary from an evolutionary point of view: women do not have to come to get pregnant. But there are indications that conception is a lot easier when a woman comes.

Biologists at the University of Manchester (England) found that women who climaxed one minute before, up to 45 minutes after their partner ejaculated, retained much more semen than women who did not ejaculate at all, or did so more than a minute before their partner .

More frequent climax with suitable father

The researchers think that the swelling and deflation of the clitoris during orgasm generates suction. And it pulls the sperm into the uterus. The idea is that by ejaculation or not, women determine which semen is allowed in and which semen is not.

Women come more often with attractive men who they see as the father of their children than with less attractive partners with whom they do not really need children.

Still no use, but by-product?

So, thanks to their clitoris, do women have any say in who fathers their offspring? The last has not yet been said about that. There are also scientists who doubt whether the female orgasm has any use beyond pleasure. According to the American anthropologist Donald Symons, the clitoris in women, like the nipples in men, may be a kind of by-product of evolution.

It may also be the case that women can have an orgasm because the clitoris and penis have the same origin. They develop from the same genital tube. If so, women can only come because an orgasm happens to be indispensable for men to procreate.