Just Hanging Out

Wondering why testicles hang at slightly different heights sounds more like locker-room banter than the subject of a scientific paper, but questions about scrotal irregularity loom large even in the minds of doctors. "Swinging high and low: why do the testes hang at different levels? A theory on surface area and thermoregulation," published in Med Hypotheses in 2008, thinks balls that hang at different levels cool off more efficiently than evenly hanging testes. "In effect, just by suspension at two levels, nearly one entire extra surface is available for thermoregulation and cooling," the paper, co-authored by Kuma A and Kumar CJ, explains. {via DiscoBlogs}