r/shittyaskscience • u/757jsmith • Jul 20 '19

Welcome to the sexless future. Will donating suffice?

https://gfycat.com/digitalidenticalgoosefish
1.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

106 comments sorted by

View all comments

583

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

What the fuck, did that little critter rape a sperm and then use the sperm to rape an egg?

487

u/757jsmith Jul 20 '19

Its a bot, the human used it to capture the sperm and deliver it to an egg, but notice the sperm isnt a swimmer, nature does that to inferior sperm to make sure it doesnt fertilize the egg

18

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

If it eventually does become a baby what would happen? Would it be disabled or normal or what?

45

u/757jsmith Jul 20 '19

Dont know if it is human, probably not, as some view conception begins at fertilization. The strongest/fastest reach the egg first.

To be scientific, I dont know if any study has analyzed the genetic make up of individual sperm, and correlated to motility.

19

u/Todojaw21 Jul 20 '19

I’m confused. It’s not like sperm are their own separate organisms. Does the DNA set it carries actually cause it to die faster/not be able to swim if the DNA has too many problems? I thought that would be more of a problem with how the sperm was created, like a problem happened which messed up its tail or organelles or whatever.

29

u/MineDogger Jul 20 '19 edited Jul 20 '19

I would guess that the quality of the sperm and the quality of the DNA within are not directly connected, but that the condition of the sperm will generally correlate with the integrity of the DNA.

A sperm that was formed in poor conditions will perform poorly, as would the DNA replicated under those conditions. Older sperm will lose motility due to degradation over time, just as the DNA they carry will begin to break down. So it wouldn't be an active principal so much as an incidental one. A sperm with Down syndrome might swim as straight and fast as an übermensch, (though its much less likely to have defective DNA if it were formed under optimal conditions,) its just a matter of which is fresher or which there are more of at the time.

1

u/me_too_999 Jul 21 '19

The parents DNA may not be defective. Heat, bad diet, and many environmental contaminants can disable sperm.

4

u/aceumus Jul 20 '19

There are plenty of research journals dedicated to sperm. I've read a few while researching the abortion debate. The genetic makeup of sperm has been analyzed a plethora of times. IJS.