Posted on 06/19/2009 2:56:39 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Size does matter, at least for the seed shrimp.
The tiny creatures' giant sperm are an evolutionary strategy that stretches back at least a hundred million years, scientists discovered in a new study.
The giant sperm can be up to ten times the animals' body lengths. By comparison an average sperm from a man is around 0.002 inch (0.05 millimeter) long, less than a thirty-thousandth of his height.
To find out whether giant sperm is an ancient adaptation, researchers x-rayed the innards of five well-preserved seed shrimp, or ostracods, from hundred-million-year-old sediment from Brazil. Although the giant sperm had rotted away, the scientists could still see the remains of perhaps the ultimate male organ: a sperm pump, used to push the giant sperm out of the body.
"Only [shrimp] that produce giant sperm have this organ," study co-author Robin Smith, of Lake Biwa Museum in Japan, said by email.
Each of the giant sperm cells (left) of seed shrimp (right) can reach up to ten times the body length of the animal. The supersize sperm is an adaptation stretching back at least a hundred million years, a June 2009 study says.
Giant sperm. View in Google
I hope this will be peer reviewed.
Well this thread otter be good.
The seedy side of marine life!
The left arrow shows the preserved inner part of the esophagus of the Harbinia micropapillosa, while the right arrow points to the two seminal receptacles, where this female stored the giant sperm cells after mating.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31430288/ns/technology_and_science-science/
This is so much like Global warming it’s scary. If they find a “big sperm”, it shows an “evolutionary advantage”. But humans have smaller sperm, and somehow we are at the top of the evolutionary ladder, so I guess having smaller sperm is better.
Or maybe it just USED to be that big sperm were good, and now smaller is better.
We humans have LOTS of tiny sperms. If one doens't get through, another will.
HAH! Take that seed shrimp!
“¿Quien es mas macho?”
I don’t know—this one may be peerless!
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Sounds like these ostracods need to wear ostracodpieces. |
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You’re confused. The “big sperm” is an advantage for the shrimp.
Here’s an analogy: A long distance runner wants to improve his stamina. A sprinter wants to increase speed.
They both have different strategies to meet different goals.
Is one of them somehow fundamentally “better” ?
If your environment is man-eating animals who can’t run faster than 5 mph, the sprinter is fundamentally better. If your environment is sparse vegetation where you have to travel miles a day to get enough food to eat, the long-distance runner is fundamentally better.
Or you could just accept that whatever happens to be seen, it must have been what was “better”. And therefore, we could just look at whatever happened in the past, and take whatever evidence we find and make up a story about how it is better.
It’s like how each day, the papers “explain” why the stock market went up or down. They always have a perfectly good-sounding reason, and you wonder why these people didn’t use their knowledge of what the market would do to get a better job than writing stories about the market — until you realise that they can find an “explanation” no matter what the market does.
I’m sure these researchers could have convinced us that small sperm was a great advantage for the shrimp as well, if that was what they found.
I attribute that to People having a strong need for a narrative. A narrative is necessary for a good story.
Plus I suspect English (or any human language) is unsuitable for describing events and processes without a motivation. :)
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