This has to be one of the oldest and most widespread myths about the penis. While the shape of a woman’s breasts, hips and legs could be, at the very least, guessed regardless of the clothes she was wearing, the size of a man’s penis has always been notoriously hard to fathom without direct observation. Of course, there are some men who can boast, easily observed, bulging crotches, but such cases are rare. Many people believe that, height aside, penis size can also be guessed from some visible body part or other. Penis size is believed to be related to the size of the nose, ears, hand (measured from the wrist to the fingertip) or foot.

In 2002, the British Journal of Urology International published a study conducted on 104 men whose feet sizes ranged from 8 to 13. The researchers found that there is no correlation between the size of the male foot and penis size. It’s true that the study did not focus on height as a way of identifying penis size, but the result has every chance of applying to it. Penis size does not follow the same rules as bones and muscles, which have to match the overall height in order to sustain body weight and maintain the erect posture. The penis should be compared with the ears and the nose as an appendage that is not influenced by body height.

Although it is true that the development of the penis while the embryo is inside the womb is controlled by the same genes as the limbs, there is no direct correlation between the limbs and penis size. The overall development of the human body during childhood and puberty is controlled by a large number of genes and hormones and it is highly unlikely that the size of two different and not directly linked parts of the body would be controlled by the same gene or hormonal effect. Such myths are always cropping up here and there and there’s no indication they will ever vanish from the huge body of ideas shared by mankind. Still, it’s the job of scientist to do them justice or disprove them once and for all.