[Political Junkie Too]

The Discovery Channel ran a documentary once that found that there were actually three kinds of sperm: 1) an offensive sperm that would seek out the female egg, 2) a defensive sperm that would curl up its tail and block passage to the female egg, and 3) an attacking sperm that would seek out the sperm of another male and attempt to kill it.

Now, why would nature evolve the male sperm to run interference for itself and seek to destroy competing sperm?

-PJ

[Semper Paratus]

Now, why would nature evolve the male sperm to run interference for itself and seek to destroy competing sperm?

I remember the Woody Allen movie where he played a sperm dressed as airborne about to jump worrying about what's out there:

"I heard you hit this rubber barrier and are poisoned."
"Or even worse, what if its a homosexual encounter?"

[elmer fudd]

From what I understand the "sperm wars" theory has been pretty much shot down as inaccurate. What they actually found was that the more monogamous the species was the lazier and more defective their sperm was. Critters like gorillas had a high percentage of sperm cells that swam in circles or had two tails and basically did the sort of things that were supposed to block competitors sperm. In gorilla society however none of that was necessary since the females only bred with the dominant male. Chimps, spider monkeys and other promiscuous species on the other hand had very few of these "blocking sperm". They instead produced much larger quantities of fast, healthy sperm and the more promiscuous the species was the higher the count was of healthy, "normal" sperm and the lower the percentage of the supposed "blocking sperm".

[photogirl]

I saw both of these shows. They were really interesting.