Female Sex Organs:
Females’ internal sex organs are units that work in three main ways. First, there are two production units that store and ripen eggs. Second, there is a safe, well-nourished chamber where a fertilized egg can lodge and grow into a chamber.
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Third there are three tubes connected with that chamber. These tubes help a sperm to reach and fertilize an egg inside the woman’s body; one of them later lets out the baby resulting from this union of male and female cells.
Overies are the two organs producing eggs, and the female harmones estrogen and progesterone. Each month an egg leaves an ovary and is collected by a Fallopian tube, in which eggs are usually fertilized.
External Female Genitals:
Called collectively the vulva, and largely hidden by pubic hair, these lie between the legs. The vaginal opening (a) is partly covered by a memberane called the hymen, (b) and lies below the urinary outlet or urethra, (c) and above the anus, (d) Mucus from Bartholin’s glands, (e) lubricates the inner lips or labia minora, (f) hairless skinfolds that flank the vagina. Above the urethra they fuse to form a clitoral hood, (g) masking the clitoris, (h) a female “penis.
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The fatty outer lips or labia majora, (i) extend down from the mons veneris (mons pubis)-a fatty pad over the pubic bone-to form the vulva’s protective rim. The perineum, (j) is a skin triangle that covers tissue stretched in childbirth.
Male Sex Organs:
Man’s primary sex glands are the tests : two eggs-shaped organs hanging in the scrotum, a visible sac behind and below the penis. Tests produce sperm cells and the male harmones called androgens.
Sperm is stored in the epididymides for transfer via two tubes to the urethra. On the way, the sperm cells mix with seminal fluid from the seminal vesicles, prostale gland and Cowper’s gland.
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The resulting mixture is the thick white liquid called semen. Like urine from the bladder, semen travels through the urethra to exit from the penis tip. When man’s penis is inserted into the vagina of a woman in course of intercourse.
This semen enters into the female tube to be fertilized.
The Penis:
The cylindrical shape of the penis allows it to enter a woman’s vagina and so ensure the internal fertilization of an ovum. The penis of most adult males is about 3¼ 4¼ long, and normally hangs limply. For intercourse it becomes stiff, enlarged, erect and usually 5-7″ long. Shown here are a longitudinal section (1) and a cross section (2).
Conception:
Conception happens when an egg in a woman’s Fallopian tube is invaded by a sperm. The process by which they meet is complex and ingenious. Early in the menstrual cycle a new egg begins maturing in a follicle in one ovary.
At mid-cycle the follicle bursts and frees the eggs-an event called ovulation. By the fourteenth day, the endometrium thickens, ready to receive the egg if this is fertilized. Meanwhile the egg enters the woman’s peritoneal cavity, where “tentacles” around one end of a Fallopian tube capture it and feed the egg into the tube.