It’s hard enough for us humans to fight for a mate. But for the now-extinct mussel-like creatures known as ostracods, which lived on Earth about 100 million years ago, “getting in” was only part of the battle.
That’s where giant sperm comes in: Females copulated with multiple males, so it was up for the sperm themselves to duke it out inside of the female’s body. New research based on microfossils of these ancient creatures, led by Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz in Munich, shows that a male’s sperm may have been even larger than the animal itself. And ostracods aren’t the only animals to produce mega-sperm, according to Reuters:
Giant sperm are still around today. A human sperm, for example, would have to be 40 meters long to measure up against a fruit fly’s. The insect is only a few millimeters in size but can produce 6 cm-long (2.5 inch) coiled sperm.
Now that’s impressive.
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Image: flickr / notsogoodphotography
June 18th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
That’s one big amount of sperm!
June 19th, 2009 at 2:07 am
We learn from fruit flies that making love hurt aids multiplication, just like banana’s. The lesson we learn from extinct ostracods is don’t try to produce more sperm than yourself, espescially when you look like one.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:07 am
[...] Apparently a type of ancient crustacean produced sperm that was not shrimpy at all — the manly cells were even bigger than the full grown adult version of itself. Sounds like a hell of a sea monkey to have to give birth to. [Via [...]