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Human sperm cooperate on the competitive pathway to fertilization: study
- stevenjgarner 3y agoTime for Robin Baker to update the seminal "Sperm Wars" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars
- astura 3y ago>seminal I see what you did there.
- kridsdale1 3y agoLet’s do a seminar on it this semester in the seminary.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago> In certain bee species, the male’s body literally explodes after copulation, due to a sudden increase in intra-abdominal pressure, which embeds part of the now-deceased male’s body into the female’s genital tract, preventing other males from copulating with the just-fertilized female. Wrong; other males can still mate with the female. The whole point is for her to mate with multiple males. I wonder what else in this story is incorrect
- not2b 3y agoIt says "in certain bee species". Are you an expert in the field? You seem very confident here that this doesn't apply to any bee species.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CoastalCoder 3y agoA citation might help your argument.
- scarmig 3y agoSince I was curious too, I dug up this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1847503/#:~:text=Immediately https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1847503/#:~:tex... Multiple males do mate with the queen, with the everted endophallus acting as a signal to other males and perhaps offering protection from the queen's stinger. Technical term seems to be "mating sign," and males prefer queens with a mating sign.
- arp242 3y agoBut there are 20,000 bee species, many of which are actually solitary. That just looks at the honey bee.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI can think of worse ways to die than a fatal orgasm.
- because_789 3y ago> About one-fifth of mammalian (including human) sperm are typically abnormal, containing no heads, two heads, two or more tails, oddly misshapen or malfunctioning tails, and so forth. TIL
- TecoAndJix 3y agoYou can get a microscope on Amazon for a few hundred bucks that lets you see this, red blood cells, and the critters that live in the water behind your house. Fun way to spend a weekend!
- _zoltan_ 3y agoany specific recommendations that one could hook up to something to record the images/video?
- olejorgenb 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/@micro_safari https://www.youtube.com/@micro_safari has some recommendations (disclaimer: they do run a small shop, but he seems knowledgeable)
- giantg2 3y agoTechnically you can record with your phone through the eye piece.
- internetter 3y agoIt's no fun
- melagonster 3y agothere are some microscopes which are selling with a separate camera. microscope and camera spend you at least 6000$, then you can capture pictures on computer.
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- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoAnimals' shared ancestor with fungus is thought to be among https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate, which kinda look like sperm. My guess is that they were predominantly haploid (like sperm/eggs), and just had a diploid (like most other human cells) phase for reproduction. Somewhere along the way this switched (which is thought to have happened in plants also, mosses are primarily haploid while flowering plants are primarily diploid). ...which is totally bonkers. It's like if sperm/eggs went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a human briefly for reproductive purposes. But then the sex got a bit out of control and got a job and an apartment and now it's the sperm who look like they're just for reproduction. Disclaimer: I took Bio 101 two semesters back, so I'm pretty much an expert.
- kridsdale1 3y agoYour comment reminds me of another biology tale: The natural, most efficient, and optimal state of an animal is napping. Wakefulness, and everything that happens during that time, is just an annoying distraction to maintain homeostasis.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwup238 3y agoThat is the natural state of the domesticated cat because we have artificially selected them to match our aspirations. The optimal nappers. They’re awake just long enough to remind us that they’re the boss and our sole function is to feed them.
- nebula8804 3y agoAre you sure thats not just the toxoplasmosis gondii talking? [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_differences_of_infected_hosts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_d...
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI read a book long ago called Sperm Wars. It’s almost pornographic in style but every chapter describing the biology of sperm and sex is preceded with a fictional narrative of some courting ritual. Really blew my mind at the time at how complex and interconnected the behavior of sperm and egg are with general human behaviors via hormone communication.
- kridsdale1 3y agoYou should also read Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene. Everything we think we are, and what we are here to do, is fight to make our kids or our kin’s kids (if we can’t / won’t reproduce) survive and do the same. Politics, architecture, everything is you being manipulated to do this.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoOh yes that’s a great one too. The general category of evolutionary biology humbles you quickly out of any notion that thinking you have anything resembling free will in most of your life.
- trgn 3y agoI think stepgen gould (?) joked that taking that perspective, you could easily argue that the purpose of the human organism was for shit to make more shit.
- Dalewyn 3y agoSincerely, there really is no meaning to life other than to make more life. Cancer is the extreme and absolute epitome of this. Any other meanings we as humans might contrive from life are all just coping mechanisms from that brutally simple reality.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoAnd that only because the kinds of life that (briefly) didn’t absolutely prioritize making more life are, almost by definition, extinct.
- giantg2 3y agoSome of this might not be accurate. "Human testes are on average 0.06 percent of body weight and sperm concentration is about 25 million per ejaculate." 25 million per ejaculation would fall in the "low" fertility category. At the other end of the range you can have 10x that amount. The part about bee phallus implantation is true, but to my knowledge it does not really deter others (in honey bees at least). The queen mates with multiple males and has offspring using genetics from more than one.
- Auracle 3y ago25 million is quite low. ~15 million per ml is considered infertile and you usually ejaculate at least 1.5ml.
- bee_rider 3y agoThe idea that sperm cooperate is quite funny. They are sometimes used as a sort of example of how wildly competitive life is from the very start, we were in cooperation to even be born. In fact, it was a group project.
- gumballindie 3y ago> example of how wildly competitive life is from the very start Isnt sperm more like data rather than a living thing? Nonetheless, without cooperation, humans, would not have survived. It is only logical that our initial data carriers also cooperate in some way.
- galaxyLogic 3y agoYes, they are about security by redundancy, and randomization. Every child you have is different and therefore more able to survive as circumstances change.
- Qem 3y agoIf sperm cooperate, I wonder if the effects of the reported[1] historical decreasing sperm counts are worse than thought. For example, if the value drops by half, perhaps the decrease in fertility is not linear, but quadratic, falling to 1/4 of the original value, because each of the 50% left has only half the average number of peers to cooperate (this is only an example. I have no idea on how fertility scales with sperm counts). [1] https://www.amazon.com/Count-Down-Threatening-Reproductive-Development-ebook/dp/B084G9MMVH https://www.amazon.com/Count-Down-Threatening-Reproductive-D...
- munchler 3y ago> When sperm disband their cooperativeness, it’s each pollywog for himself. I'm surprised to see Nautilus implying that all sperm are male. Half of those pollywogs carry an X chromosome. You go, girls!
- benreesman 3y ago[flagged]
- galaxyLogic 3y agoThat's because sperm-cells of a single male all share the same goal. They are not really competing are they? They all have the same goal, carrying on the genes of the same individual.
- justinl33 3y ago> This pattern is consistent with data on the average number of male sex partners for females per birth: gorillas, one partner per birth; human beings, 1.1; baboons, 8; bonobos, 9; and common chimps, 13. I don't understand this statistic. 'Human beings average 1.1 male sex partners per birth...' we need to see the data behind this. This isn't implying that 1 in every 11 children are bastards, no?
- subarctic 3y agoThat number (1.1) seems low, considering the average number of lifetime sex partners for women is something like 5 or 6 and the average number of births (fertility rate) is something like 2. How can we track down the source for that statistic and figure out how it was measured?
- ljlolel 3y agoThis is one of the reasons that 23andme has warnings about dna matching to relatives https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-chances-that-your-dad-isnt-your-father-24802 https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-chances-that-your-d...
- claviska 3y ago> When the hard-working little swimmers encounter the thicker vaginal mucus, their path is slowed. So the sperm often join together at their heads, which gives them greater swimming speed (up to 50 percent faster) than if they were to carry on individually. Teamwork makes the cream work.
- fallingfrog 3y agoWell, they do all have pretty much the same dna, so it makes sense I suppose. The same way that ants cooperate.