Health4 min(s) read
Published 10:35 30 Dec 2024 GMT
People have been left gobsmacked after seeing MRI images of a couple having sex.
Sexual intercourse is something most people find important in a relationship, but MRI images have let people see the act in a whole different light.
While it's a topic most people have fixated on at one stage of their lives or another, the scan images have shown exactly what goes down inside a man's and woman's bodies as they get freaky between the sheets.
Ida Sabelis and her boyfriend Jupp helped to change the understanding of the female anatomy forever after they had sexual intercourse in an MRI machine in 1991.
The couple opted to become the willing guinea pigs for their friend, Dutch scientist Menko Victor ‘Pek’ van Andel, who wanted to see what happens inside the body when a couple has sex.
Ida and Jupp's images were the first of their kind, and became the focus of a well-known British Medical Journal entry in 1999 when a more detailed study was conducted, and is still read by thousands of people every month.
While the images were captured over three decades ago, they have once again gone viral after being shared on TikTok.
The images helped scientists to discover that the vaginal canal was actually curved, after they'd initially believed it to be straight.
People were also blown away by how the images were captured, with Ida and Jupp having to get into their rhythm before stopping and holding still when instructed to by the researchers.
Ida told the publication that she'd agreed to take part in the unusual study as a "favor" to Pek, who was her best friend's partner at the time.
She was also a big campaigner for women's rights and wanted to help science broaden its understanding of the female body.
Ida and Jupp were initially supposed to have sex in a standard missionary position in the machine, but Ida - who is a professor of organizational anthropology at Amsterdam’s Vrije University - revealed that she suggested a spooning position instead, explaining: "It’s a position that for me produces hardly any arousal. Anyway, Jupp would have been too heavy in that tiny tube."
She revealed that there was plenty of laughter as the pair wriggled around inside the small tube to get into position.
Their work was groundbreaking as it had previously been a long-running belief that a woman's vagina was a straight "tunnel" and that the man's penis went in straight and came out straight, including in early depictions such as the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing from the 1492 showing the vagina as a straight cylinder.
However, the MRI proved that "the penis has the shape of a boomerang” when inside a woman's body, bending to fit the shape of her anatomy without causing the male partner any pain.
The discovery was enormous, and led to Ida and Pek conducting a formal study between 1991 and 1999, the results of which were published in the BMJ.
These experiments recorded participants - who were all volunteers over the age of 18 who could quit at any point should they choose to - as they engaged in the missionary position.
None of the participants opted to drop out, but it was noted that it was only Ida and Jupp that were able to complete the test without the use of Viagra.
She told Vice: "It became pleasantly warm in the tube and we truly succeeded in enjoying each other in a familiar way.
"When I saw them [the images] it was just like, ‘aww that’s how we fit together’."
The article, which was published in 1999, remains one of the medical journal's "most popular articles of all time" and was even honored by BMJ on its 20th anniversary in 2019.
People were left stunned after seeing the resurfaced images, writing: "OK but like how is there space."
Others added: "They just don't do science like this anymore," and: "the most surprising thing is that they managed to get 2 ppl in an old school MRI machine... there's barely room for one person!"
.webp_lli6Ty?tr=cr-74.9.445.380,f-webp,q-70,w-100)