Longest Known Sperm Create Paradox of Nature

[tocqueville]

Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Fri Jun 16, 4:00 PM ET

If there was a prize for biggest sperm in nature, it would go to Drosophila bifurca, a tiny fruit fly whose coiled sperm would measure more than 2 inches long if straightened out.

That's 1,000 times longer than an average human sperm.

"To put that into perspective, if humans made sperm that long and you took a six-foot man and stood him on the goal line of a football field, his sperm would stretch out to the 40-yard line," said Adam Bjork, a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University in New York.

Along with Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick, Bjork examined why any animal, let alone a tiny fruit fly, would evolve such lengthy sperm.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060616/sc_space/longestknownspermcreateparadoxofnature

[ThomCat]

1. I don't want to know how they get the sperm

out of those flies to do their research.
:rofl:

[mrcheerful]

2. Well first you get a female fly in heat then next you get out the ky jelly

then very careful, using the cutest tiniest pair of tweezers you minutely stroke. Oh sorry you said "you didn't want to know". Darn need new bi-focals.

Edited to add the real problem is getting those tiny legs apart.

[Ready4Change]

4. Comment

Yes, and the print on the articles in the pornographic magazines the flys are given "top get in the mood" is really hard to read, too.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Studying the evolutionary aspects of drosophila sperm...

Now there's an up and coming line of research for ya.

[Posteritatis]

5. Fruit flies are great for research

They're inexpensive to keep, are reasonably complex genetically (compared to most life on the planet, that is), and have eyeblink generations. You could observe things in months with them that would take centuries to observe in humans, and the principle's pretty much the same in either species.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. I'm fairly much aware of that.

Believe it or not, we were using them in genetic studies more than 40 years ago, back when I was an undergrad.

[sakabatou]

7. This should get an Ignobel in biology