Not too long ago, I ruminated on a colossal penis geoglyph that had popped up in a dry lake bed in Australia, opining that humanity hasn’t really changed much in this respect in several millennia. Now, thanks to a voyeuristic and unnecessarily detailed Reddit thread, the Web has decided that “summer penises” are a thing, which has made me reconsider my hypothesis.

Humanity has, in fact, changed. Not the (mainly male) obsession with their poorly structured dangly parts, nor the need to talk about or draw them everywhere. What I mean is, thanks to the Internet, it’s never been easy to throw a penis or two around, and this latest venture is no exception. What a grim time to be alive.

So, a Reddit netizen by the name of Guillermo asked the virtual public whether or not their penis fluctuates in size – at peak erection times – depending on the season. He suggests that they’re bigger in the summer.

He also suggests that warmer ambient temperatures boost blood flow to his joystick, and as we all know, blood flow to the penis is what triggers an erection in the first place. This has set off a flood of headlines and articles declaring that “summer penises are now a thing” – starting with Mel Magazine – even though the data points for this People's Study are simply men on the Internet.

In fact, Mel Magazine points to an article dating back to 2009, in which a recruitment consultant suggests that he is also “bigger in the summer”. Indeed, that Reddit post by Guillermo dates back to 2016, a year that I’m sure we all remember fondly.

Apropos of nothing, a urologist then offers a horrific scrotal analogy that is about as welcome as a dead cat. He posits that we can “think of the penis as these two sausage casings that fill with blood,” but I’d personally rather not.

Now, according to another urologist that spoke with said publication, your penis doesn’t change size according to the seasons. That much should be obvious to literally everyone, who would have spotted this curious phenomenon by now.

What’s probably happening is that, in cooler climes, the blood vessels on your penis contract in order to preserve heat. This isn’t the case in warmer environments, so it could appear larger. But really, it isn’t.

Urologist #1 adds that a warmer ambient temperature will cause your blood vessels to dilate more. This will increase blood flow to your erectile tissue ever so slightly, which could make it a tad larger – but that this was “impossible to quantify”.

So summer penises are barely a thing, if at all. Let’s put it another way: The long-term warming trend is not going to give guys a freakishly massive member.