It seems like with many current animals, the penis and vagina are often located just in front or otherwise near the buttocks, somewhere on the pelvis.
Evolutionarily, was this the case? Are there animals with strangely-placed genitalia, either extant or in the fossil record?
Leopard slugs are the only thing that come to mind for me. Which others are there?
And I am in Britain and it is a BBC video, dammit! I paid for it, with my license fee, and I am not allowed to watch it, but it seems like people in other countries, who did not pay for it, are! :mad:
I have got a good mind to rearrange some BBC person’s genitals!
Bear in mind that for most organisms, holes connecting your internal organs with the outside environment make you kind of vulnerable. Not to go all “Just-So Stories” on the accidents of evolution, but it does make a fair bit of sense that such holes should be concentrated in specific areas that you can protect.
Thus, e.g., for mammals our holes are located either in the “command tower” at the front end of our torsos, where most of the data gathering takes place and potential threats are most readily noticed, or in the “engine room” at the other end, tucked into the crevice between our hind limbs which is better shielded from immediate contact with all the things we go around sticking our heads and paws into.
What’s the joke? God must be a civil engineer - who else would route wastewater disposal through a recreational facility?
The commonality of placement amongst vertebrates is most likely due to ancestral body plan - so we need to look further afield, however, many of the organisms in other phyla don’t actually copulate at all - they just release gametes - so they don’t have anything like a penis or vagina.
Well, they have something like a penis or vagina, in that they release gametes from some specific organ. And even in nonvertibrates, that organ is often at the posterior end of the body, near the anus.
I’ve often wondered why male seals and walruses, sliding over rocks, don’t have to wear a cup.
Because they retract their genitalia into their bodies. If you look at a male walrus he’s just got a slit–until it’s business time. Then out comes the wedding tackle, reinforced with a two foot long bone. Like, a literal bone. Native Alaskans used to use them as war clubs.
Excellent. As well as quick, to the point, and accurate reply. With weird fun fact as lagniappe.
Classic GQ. If it were me, that would have been the subject hed of an OP…
Much like sumo wrestlers?
Could be worse. We could have these…
In zoological anatomy, a cloaca /kloʊˈeɪkə/ is the posterior opening that serves as the only opening for the intestinal, reproductive, and urinary tracts of certain animal species. All amphibians, birds, reptiles, and monotremes possess this orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces, unlike most placental mammals, which possess two or three separate orifices for evacuation.
Not really. A penis is pretty specifically a copulatory device. A duct that releases semen is by no means necessarily a penis and a duct that releases ova probably isn’t actually a vagina.
No way. It’s a religious device. Cite.
ETA : apotropaic means “wards off evil spirits”
Or, you know that God must be a Polack*. Who else would put the snack bar right next to the shithouse?
Moderator Note
Let’s save derogatory and offensive jokes for the next “Tell me your most derogatory and offensive jokes” thread in MPSIMS. No warning issued. (And no, inclusion of a specific ethnic group isn’t essential to the joke. You could have just said [insert ethnic group of your choice].)
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[QUOTE=Orwell]
Or, you know that God must be a [redacted]. {snip}
[/QUOTE]
Next time, substitute “Aggie” for [redacted]. That’s classic humor there, my son. 
Now that the legit answers have been supplied, I’ll leave you with a nugget of philosophical wisdom I’ve said for years:
“If God didn’t us to masturbate, he shouldn’t have made our arms long enough for our hands to reach our genitals.” --Toucanna
Thank you, thank you, and please remember to include the attribution when you quote me. 
Darwin doesn’t do jokes.
See Fig. 10 of the female elephant. The anus is nowhere near the vulva. The vagina is up inside the back of the elephant connected to the vulva via a very long vestibule (which in humans is only a few cm IIRC.) There was an interesting TV show (a series about animal sex?) that I stumbled across. The researchers had to collect semen so they anesthetized the male and inserted a very large electrical device in the rectum to stimulate an erection. With the help of a bit of stroking by the attractive female researcher they were able to collect a rather small sample using an elbow high rubber glove as a condom / collection device.
“So what do you do for a living, love ?” “Oh, you know, boring stuff. I jerk elephants off. Sorry, I meant: I’m a biology researcher.”