**A Brief History of Holes**

Animals started off with one hole, which served as both a mouth and an anus. Yes, that’s right – shit came out of the same hole food went into. Being the only hole, this is also the hole that eggs and/or sperm came out of.

Then a while later one branch of animals evolved the extremely clever concept of “lets have the shit come out a second hole” – and rather than going in to the mouth then back out of the mouth, food instead went in one end and waste went out the other.

With this adaptation there were now two possible choices of where sperm and eggs could come out – either the mouth, or the anus.

Our ancestors used the anus – so sperm/eggs, urine and shit were all coming out of the same hole, but hey at least it wasn’t the hole we were eating with anymore, so that was an improvement. This sperm/egg+urine+shit hole is known as a cloaca.

[Then some animals developed lungs; which needed to be attached to one of the two holes in order to function properly. You may be thankful that the successful adaptation of lungs had them attached to the eating-hole, not the shitting-hole.

Then some lucky animals developed a split in the mouth hole, generating a new nose-hole (that developed into two nostrils) specifically for breathing through.]

Some time later “internal fertilisation” was developed, which meant that the cloaca of females had to take an *input* from the male’s cloaca, as well as outputting eggs.

Even later, the cloaca split into three holes – all of which had to remain close to each other, because evolution is a very conservative process – the Urethra, through which urine travels; the anus, which releases solid waste; and the Vagina or the seminal canal depending on whether the specimen was male or female.

In males it was useful to have an appendage that could be inserted into the female to transfer sperm – and having such an appendage it makes sense to push the urethra through that to allow easier removal of waste.

Females don’t truly have such a structure, although a partial mirror of it exists in the Clitoris, so the Urethra just sits in that general area – but they do need a much larger hole for eggs or babies to pass through, thus developing a vagina that sits next to the Anus, allowing it to stretch more easily by taking up the room that would otherwise be used for the anal cavity.