Oh!You naughty Neuroscientist!

In a dissection room filled with the sweet fumes of formaldehyde I very nearly made what would have been a very embarrassing blunder.

I very nearly asked why the mammillary bodies were called the mammillary bodies (How embarrassing). My near escape happened after a formidable lecturer knowingly asked rhetorically "And we all know why the mammillary bodies are call so,don't we?" Smug laughs and chortles from my class mates followed.I remained baffled,but luckily, silent.

Then I googled.

Then I blushed.

Then I breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank god I didn't ask.

Oh us Neuroscientists are naughty ones! ;)

Check out this article from Slate.com explaining where some of the more cheeky names for neuroanatomical structures came from.

http://www.slate.com/id/2294833/pagenum/all/

Above are the mammillary bodies of a sheep's brain,demonstrating their..em...shape.