The North American tribe Hopi's snake ritual for good harvest made the reptile a symbol of fertility. They liken the serpent to an umbilical cord that joins humans to Mother Earth for nourishment, according to Wikipedia.

New findings of scientists seem to reinforce that symbolism.

A team of Australian and American researchers conducted an extensive study on the female sex organ of snakes called hemiclitores and found that it has nerve bundles and blood swells the erectile tissue. Their findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Snakes are very tactile animals, so there's quite a high chance that they would get quite a lot of sensation even through the skin," Megan Folwell, a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the new study's lead author, said, according to Agence France-Presse.

If the snakes' hemiclitores is stimulated during sex, it likely prompts longer and more frequent mating, resulting in a greater chance of reproductive success, Folwell said.

"Pleasure is such an important part of reproduction," she added.

Another kind of animal delivers a different sensation through their genitals, based on the findings of Japanese scientists.

Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Japan's Kobe University, learned this in an experiment where male wasps were offered as food to pond and tree frogs.

In a video of the experiment, tree frogs rejected one of two sets of wasps from their tongue for being stung.

"Male wasps were frequently observed to pierce the mouth or other parts of frogs with their genitalia while being attacked," Sugiura reported in research published on 20 December in the Current Biology journal, AFP reported.

Male wasps lack the stinging organ or ovipositor of female wasps but are equipped with two large spikes that sit either side of their penis, Sigiura said, according to AFP. The spikes are deployed for self-defense against predators.