The World's Most Terrifying Penises, Part 5: The Leopard Slug
Let us turn our attention, dear readers, from a topic of somewhat gross sexual inequality to one which is a trifle more egalitarian in nature. From the depths of the ocean we now turn to the pacific northwest and my own home of British Columbia. Home to a wide array of distinctive flora and fauna, few of them are as notably bizarre to those born elsewhere in this largely boreal country as the comparatively massive Leopard Slugs found throughout the mainland. And it is these creatures that we now gawk at in horrified wonder as we learn that they have some of...
The Leopard Slug representative of many of its fellows in its order in that it is a hermaphrodite. No issues of sexual dimorphism for these randy little beasts, nor yet of who gets to lead on the dance floor. Each and every one of them - barring, I suppose those victims of accident or birth defect - is possessed of both female and male organs. And what male organs they possess!
Rather than extending out of the lower abdomen or some other out-of-the way locale, the penis is contained in the right side of the slug's head, thus giving rise to its Latin name 'Mucosus Invertebratus Caputithyphallicus', which literally translates into "Slimy, spineless dickhead"*. It is distinct from the familiar human counterpart not only in placement but in colouration, among other things - or, more precisely, the lack thereof: Oozing out of the side of the creature's head, it appears as a translucent white tendril, writhing about as if possessed of a mind of its own, which - at full mast - has a length which is comparable to the total length of the adult slug's entire body.
The situation in which this arises (so to speak) is itself a rather striking one. When two Leopard Slugs take a fancy to one another, they travel together to some ledge or outcropping or what-have you which extends over an otherwise empty expanse. The branches of trees are the most common location for such a moonlight rendezvous, but man-made structures will do just as well for those couples looking for something a bit more modern and exotic. They then entwine themselves with one another and then ooze out a special type of slime which has a consistency and purpose which is disturbingly similar to that secreted by one Mr. Peter Parker in some versions of his story; this white strand of organic outpouring anchors them to their ledge as they then swing out on the end of the length of it and hang there together in mid-air, tightly wound about one another in an erotic embrace. It's at this point that they whip their dicks out.
Both slugs extend their phalluses, which then dangle together below the two of them, wriggling about until they find one another. When they do, they too wrap about one another, and then - THEN, believe it or not - then is when the weird shit starts.
The two intertwined prehensile body-length translucent slug cocks metamorphose, transforming into a configuration which looks somewhat like a church bell got drunk one night, fucked a rose and then gave birth to infants which it then had to explain through tearful eyes to the minister before being excommunicated and forced to live on the streets and sell its bong noises to greasy men in back alleys in order to support its hideous offspring, praying every night to a bell-shaped god which didn't seem to be listening anymore for forgiveness for this terrible crime against nature. This flowery-bell configuration is, believe it or not, the means by which the two slugs pass their sperm back and forth between them before retracting back into their bodies, carrying one another's' sperm with them as they do so, whereupon they are delivered to the internal vagina analogues which both slugs have, whereupon, if all goes according to plan, both are impregnated by the other.
The enticingly erotic mating ritual thus having been completed, the two slugs then lose any and all interest in one another and immediately release both one another and their cord of dangling slime, falling unceremoniously to the ground below and thus slither off to do whatever else it is that Leopard Slugs do to horrify and repulse us.
*this is not actually true, but it MIGHT be if they had been discovered and named by Carl Chun, whose somewhat whimsical approach to zoology results in us living in a world which contains a creature known to science as "THE VAMPIRE SQUID FROM HELL", which is not actually a vampire, not actually a squid, and not actually from hell, but whose name is otherwise 100% accurate.