Etymology fact! "Womb" comes from the Middle English word, "wombe", meaning stomach, specifically for the digestion stomach.

This is, we hope we don't need to tell you, in a different place to the uterus, and the opposite of what a uterus does.

Corollary to the above: if you're a butterfly, it actually kind of *does* work that way, but if you're reading this and you're a butterfly, please stop doomscrolling and get pollinating!

All right, you want to hear about butterflies digesting stuff with an internal reproductive organ, huh?

So basically, butterfly sex involves a male butterfly transferring a spermataphore - a little parcel of sperm - to the female. The thing with male butterflies is that their spermatophores are very hard and contain lots of stuff other than sperm. So to get to the sperm inside, the female butterfly needs to break down the spermatophore by digestion.

Female butterflies have a specialised organ for digesting spermatophores: the bursa copulatrix, which is located near the vagina.

The bursa copulatrix contains "teeth" for grinding the spermatophore, and releases enzymes to further break it down until all that is left is sperm. Yep, we're just casually dropping it in there that butterflies arguably have vagina dentata.

Anyway, this interesting set-up is pretty much limited to butterflies. The rest of us DO NOT have a special sperm-grinding digestive organ lurking in there. So the original etymology of "womb" is inaccurate. Unless you're a butterfly.

"the opposite of what a uterus does"

now imagining a species that swallows its own fertilized eggs and the young feed on chyme until they are grown enough to be puked out

RE: https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/114618853056096461