If a man has his balls removed before puberty, thus having no testosterone, would that not interfere with the mental process of puberty itself?
Did these people basically remain with the mindset of children?
Were they able to learn new languages with ease? have great memory? have child like emotions and experiences?
:dubious:
Watch ‘Jazz’ on TLC.
Testosterone impacts the development of sexual characteristics. Aging and mental development are controlled by different hormones.
Consider that eunuchs grow no taller and they stop aging at the same age as other people. If there was something that allowed them to maintain child-like ability to grow the mind, it would be reasonably likely that it would affect their aging and growth in other ways as well. It would probably make more sense to see if people who have growth or aging disorders retain the ability to continue learning information quickly.
Mankind had several thousand years to observe eunuchs in action. Seeing as they noticed some difference in behavior and ability to produce children, we can probably assume that there’s something to that. Given that they never noticed any particular brilliance on the part of eunuchs, it seems unlikely that we would discover such an ability now.
I can think of one eunuch, Zheng He, who was incredibly successful. He led a sailing expedition that brought him to India and East Africa.
Eunuchs have exactly the same range of brilliance as any other random chosen groups of males. With no loyalties to families eunuchs were favored as councilors to rulers, and many of them essentially ran countries. Undoubtedly some of them were brilliant. Undoubtedly many weren’t, but that was because most men aren’t and not because of the presence or lack of testicles.
I’m not sure what you mean by “eunuchs grow no taller,” but an interesting fact observed about church castrati is that they tended to be quite tall. Men who have Kleinfelter syndrome (XXY sex hormones) tend to be infertile, and have low testosterone production, but also tend to be unusually tall. It’s known that male mammals of other species (oxen, for example) grow to be bigger than their intact brothers. The theory generally given to explain it is that energy that would be used to develop secondary sexual characteristics and fertility goes to adding size instead.
Now, if what you mean is that eunuchs stop growing taller sometime between age 17 and 24, just like everyone else, and don’t either stop the day they are castrated, or continue throughout their lives, yes, that is true. Cessation of growth is controlled by enzymes in humans mostly in the 21st chromosome, which is why, in theory, Down syndrome, which is at its core a growth disorder, happens. People have too much information about growth cessation.
The reason, BTW, that ligers (offspring of a male lion and female tiger) are huge is that they don’t have two copies of the gene for growth cessation, because it’s a different gene in lions and tigers (I don’t know why the same thing doesn’t happen in tiglons).
Anyway, the point is that no, eunuchs don’t have childlike minds. Sometimes church castrati had very sheltered lives, and were a little emotionally stunted, apparently, but some were celebrated for their voices, and had very public lives in addition to their work for the church.
If testosterone were necessary for mental development, women would be in trouble.
But even human growth hormone is not necessary for brain development. Pituitary dwarves back in the day before it was treatable never got very tall, but they had normal adult minds.
People who have Progeria learn normally, except at the very end of their lives, when they are often extremely ill, and this interferes with their ability to learn. But the same thing is true of children with other diseases. Werner syndrome is a middle age onset aging disorder, where people in their forties suddenly begin to age and can look like they are sixty when they are 47. These people do often have early-onset memory problems that correlate with their apparent age, and not their real age. Unlike Progeria, which is really a growth disorder, Werner disorder is truly a DNA repair disorder, so people are actually experiencing tissue breakdown like that experienced by more senior people.
We should expect 2% of eunuchs to qualify as geniuses, given that 2% of everyone is a genius. Of course, historically, most geniuses probably spent most of their time reaping grains or washing pottery. There’s a smaller overlap of eunuch geniuses who were installed in positions where they could do anything, and subsequently did so.
True. I was hypothesizing that children’s ability to learn is thanks to the growth of fresh neurons as they grow, and so there would be a larger likelihood of correlation. But, as you note, dwarfism would seem to counter that hypothesis.
It’s just an expression. You don’t literally think with your dick.
Even then, eunuchs have dicks. It’s balls they lack.
Not only do eunuchs grow up, some become the Master of Whisperers.
You seem to imply that women are childlike, since they have less testosterone than men.
Not true. In many East Asian cultures, castration involved complete removal of the genitalia. (Warning – some images may be NSFW)
Well … if somebody removed your nuts you’re gonna have an attitude! And if you’re gonna have an attitude, then you’d better be big if you hope to live very long. Pipsqueak assholes tend to get gored, banished, beaten, eaten, etc., depending on the species 
Seriously, thanks for the detailed info.
“Somewhere out there is the secret to re-growing my balls!”
How common is that? In modern society there is a massive population of castrated (neutered) mammals - dogs and cats. Do neutered dogs grow larger than their un-neutered brothers?
Both genders produce both hormones, IIRC, it’s the proportions that vary depending on whether they are produced by ovaries or testes. Whereas, I presume a castrato would have none of either.
One item I recall reading that without puberty, the castrated singers of renaissance Europe tended to have interesting singing voices. Their vocal cords never thickened so their voices didn’t deepen, but their bodies grew fairly large so their lung capacity was far greater than a child’s giving them more powerful voices an greater vocal range.
Untrue, at least in humans. The adrenal glands produce some sex hormones, for example. Not my area of expertise, but castrated human men are not entirely without naturally produced sex hormones.
The last castrato to die lived long enough to record his voice. He was already retired from singing, and the recording devices weren’t great, also the singing style was not what we are used to, with a very strange vibrato, and all in all, the effect is kinda weird; however, there are a few natural male sopranists (men who can sing soprano parts without using falsetto). They are not castrati, and usually have normal levels or testosterone, they just have something odd about their vocal cords. You can find them on YouTube.
They do sound different from women, but IMO, not different enough. I mean, all those years that the church was castrating men when they could have been using women to sing is indefensible. Just couldn’t have women anywhere but cloisters.
Yes. And if you castrate an adult male, he sometimes continues to make the same, or near the same amount of testosterone as before, just not in his testes. Sometimes men castrated at an age when they would be very sexually active, can still “perform.” The reasons men who lose both testicles to something like cancer become impotent is that they are usually older when it happens, and on the edge of losing “potency” anyway, and they get depressed, which kicks them over the edge.
I know this because it came up when I attended a training on sexuality and disabled people, and they spent some time on whether spinal injuries did or didn’t make a man impotent (it depends), then we got sidetracked.
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