Want To Increase Your Chances Of Pregnancy? Make Sure You Have Several Lovers
February 12, 2010 5 Comments
Scientists have found that sperm swim faster when they have a competitor.
So if you want to increase your chances of pregnancy you should make sure you have more than one lover!
Scientists “found that sperm from promiscuous mice swam 5 micrometres a second – or 0.00018 km/h – faster than sperm from monogamous males.” Not much, but it could make a difference to who wins the race.
Of course, it’s good to keep in mind that these experiments were done on mice. I’m pretty sure there would be a lot of ethical problems studying this in humans.
Looks like promiscuity may be good for the continuation of the species! So go have fun on this Valentine’s weekend ladies.
Ha funny, but in addition to producing faster swimmers males also produce more blocker sperm when their mate is promiscuous, or even if they suspect their mate has other lovers. The blocker sperm’s sole purpose is to attack competitors, trying to guarantee a few of it’s genetic brothers get through. All those fast swimmers aren’t even trying to get to the egg, they’re running defense.
Thanks for sharing that. Do you have a reference so we can look it up? (Mack)
I don’t offhand, the info came from a sexual anthropology class I was in. If I can find a reference I’ll stop back soon.
Evidently this theory is more controversial than I was lead to believe in that class. Here’s the pro and con links. I would say the matter is not quite settled yet but the kamikaze sperm theory is losing ground.
http://www.seductionlabs.org/2007/05/24/sperm-competition-and-the-kamikaze-sperm-hypothesis/
http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/SpermWars.htm
Thanks so much! (Mack)