Across thousands of miles and hundreds of cultures, men have gazed upon the female body and thought, "I have never been more terrified." How else can you explain the legend of the fanged vagina, which has found its way across practically the entire world?

Only the details vary. In some versions, the vagina itself has teeth, while in others, there's a fish or a snake living in there and biting off any member foolish enough to come poking in. It would almost seem like empowering feminine symbolism in another context, but since most storytellers were men, the heroes of the myths were usually cunning men who had to defeat the deadly vagina to get the girl.

For example, in a myth from the Native American Zuni tribe, clever twins make fake dicks out of wood and have sex with some predatory women until "their teeth were all worn out." A slightly less mean Apache myth has the hero tricking the four deadly "vagina girls" into eating some sour berries, which puckers them right up until they can "no longer chew, but only swallow."

On the other side of the globe, a Japanese legend claims that a demon hid all up in a local lady and killed her first two husbands by, sure enough, chomping their boners. Somewhat unhappy with this turn of events, the woman seeks help from a local blacksmith, who builds a steel penis which breaks the demon's teeth (which is absolutely going to be our excuse the next time we ask our local blacksmith for an unbreakable iron dildo).

A similar iron penis legend can be found in the Indian town of Dantipur. Then there's the nearby legend from Chattisgarh, wherein the hero simply yanks a snake out of there with a stick and makes it magically fix all the dicks it had eaten.

But the gold medal definitely goes to Maori mythology, which has the hero Maui crawl into the vagina of a sleeping goddess to win immortality for humans (thanks?). Unfortunately, a bird cracks up laughing at the sight, and the goddess wakes up and bites Maui in half with her obsidian cooch fangs. And that's why we're not Highlanders. We feel like there might be some hidden subtext to all of these stories, but if so, it currently escapes us.