Biologists at Ludwig Maximilians University were surprised to discover that male seed shrimp have been creating sperm lengthier than their own bodies for at least 100 million years. “We would expect the development of these strange things,” said the team leader, “to stop at a certain point.”
Found in Harper's Magazine Findings.
...so how big are the eggs these mammoth sperm are to fertilize?
ReplyDeleteThe fruitfly Drosophila bifurca has these shrimps beat though; its sperm are 5.8cm long!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=XNW&ei=gxpTS93oK8PS-QaTq4F6&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CAgQBSgA&q=drosophila+bifurca&spell=1
Quote from somewhere:
"the world's longest sperm belongs to the fruit fly Drosophila bifurca. it is 20 times longer than its own body and 10,000 times longer than a human sperm. why does a sperm need to be so long if quantity matters more than quality? according to Scott Pitnick, "giant sperm tails represent the cellular, postcopulatory equivalent of peacocks tails, having evolved through female sperm choice." more sex facts can be found in World Sexual Records."