What You Don't Know About Sperm

Re:What You Don't Know About Sperm by chiefalchemist on Saturday January 06, 2024 @05:15AM (#38890160)

Yes and no. What's different about sperm-cells is you would expect an "every man for himself" behavior. Instead, they recognize (?) there might be other competition, other sperm donors if you will, and they therefore co-operate so one of their own wins.

Does this mean monogamy is unnatural? Or at least at one point was not the norm? And still isn't? As why continue to optimize for co-operation?

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Re:What You Don't Know About Sperm by DougEiffel on Saturday January 06, 2024 @06:21AM (#38890486)

One hypothesis is that the shape of the glans penis serves to push rival sperm out of the way and behind the glans to be scooped out of the vagina.

I wouldn't call monogamy unnatural. But it may be a more recent invention for humans. We still aren't sure how long it's been the norm.

It's possible that humans used to rape more often. It's also possible that humans practiced forms of polygamy. Either way, cooperative sperm makes sense. It's one of those things where a simple mutation would provide a clear benefit over the competition.

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Re:What You Don't Know About Sperm by galaxyLogic on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @01:16AM (#38936858)

> What's different about sperm-cells is you would expect an "every man for himself"

You could expect that if each of them were an individual. Are they? One could say that all sperm-cells in a single ejaculation are part of the same single man.

Therefore the principle still holds, but it could be re-phrased as:

"Every sperm-cell for the donor-man"

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