Study: Country boys have bigger penises than city dwellers

John Denver sang "Thank God I'm A Country Boy," and now we may know why. According to Bulgarian research published in the December issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, boys from rural areas are born with longer penises than boys from urban areas. This genital head-start leads to longer penises and bigger testicles in adulthood, too.

“The stretched penile length in the flaccid state was measured with a rigid tape from the pubopenile skin junction to the top of the penis... under maximal but not painful extension. The penile circumference was measured at the base of the penis... with a measuring tape. For obese males, the abdominal adipose tissue was shifted manually to one side to measure penile length and circumference..."

By the time the boys turned nineteen — considered the age of full maturity — the country boys had a mean length of 9.72 centimeters, which sounds more impressive before the conversion to 3.826 inches (about the length of a string bean). The city boys measured 9.29 centimeters, or 3.657 inches.

Of course, there could be some confounding variables. The 6,200-boy study originally intended to track the onset of male puberty, and plenty of people would rather not talk about their junk with scientific researchers brandishing measuring tapes. Perhaps only the more well-endowed and confident boys would be comfortable whipping it out. The rural boys in this study may also come from different racial backgrounds than the urban boys.

But what else could explain the size disparity between rural and urban boys? Try the usual culprits — differences in diet and exposure to pollution.  

That bumper sticker that reads "Save a horse, ride a cowboy" makes a lot more sense now.