Sperm Act Like Bumbling Drunks on Way to Egg

[n2doc]

Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff WriterDate: 07 May 2012 Time: 03:00 PM ET

Making a baby seems to rely on bumbling, crawling sperm, new research suggests, putting the kibosh on the popular notion that sperm are strong swimmers, whipping their tails back and forth to navigate though the uterus toward their ultimate goal of infiltrating the egg.

By studying sperm in tiny channels, researchers have discovered their travels can be arduous; instead of swimming merrily through the uterus, sperm cells tend to follow the walls of the reproductive tract, crawling along and inching around corners, frequently colliding with each other and with the walls.

"I couldn't resist a laugh the first time I saw sperm cells persistently swerving on tight turns and crashing head-on into the opposite wall of a micro-channel," study researcher Petr Denissenko, of the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

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http://www.livescience.com/20136-sperm-crawl-egg.html

[leftyohiolib]

1. well they dont have eyes so it's hard to see where youre going

[Scuba]

2. Did we ever doubt it?

[geckosfeet]

3. Hmmm. Not much changes when they reach adulthood either.

[Javaman]

4. Too easy. nt

[KansDem]

5. There could be a smart one in the pack...

[bulloney]

6. Frequently collide with each other. Swerve on tight turns. Crashing into walls. Sounds like NASCAR.