I think we all know that the best, fastest sperm wins the race to become the child whatever whatever. My question is does it actually make a difference for the kid. Would there be any difference if it was just a random one, not the first one? I’m wondering if the sperm cell being first has any correlation to the human being more functional or anything.
In: 12
Yes and no
The sperm cells all contain roughly the same chromosomes as the father creating them. There may be some random mutations within that huge group though. As for how much those small changes may influence what the child may look like, act like or be like; that can’t really be answered because the individual mutations may be incredibly different.
ELI5AHASAS (ELI5 And Have A Short Attention Spam): Sperm cells contain copies of Dad’s chromosomes that are close but not perfect copies, thus, some small changes may occur.
Well for starters, a new study shows that even though the fastest and most capable sperms reach the ovum first, it is the egg that has the final say on which sperm fertilizes it.
(https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200611/The-egg-decides-which-sperm-fertilizes-it.aspx)
Secondly, the fastest sperm might not have the healthiest genes, so yeah, it would make a difference
Your premise is wrong, the best sperm does not necessarily win the race, it’s mostly just the sperm that wins the race wins the race. Most describe it as luck and fitness combined, if it was fitness alone, it would be highly repeatable for the same sperm to win the race (the Usain Bolt of Sperm would always win), luck would be more random which sperm in a group wins (i.e. a bunch of Joe sperm walking down a road and one doesn’t happen to get distracted and go into shop or murdered on the way to the egg). In actuality it is somewhere in between these scenarios.
Your question-does it make a difference for the kid which sperm wins? Absolutely, sperm are genetically unique and will bestowe a different set of traits into the child.
Marginally. If the sperm is deformed and can’t swim good, then that would indicate something is wrong with the DNA package it is trying to deliver to the egg.
Is it really best sperm wins, or is it more like throwing bouncy balls down stairs and one happens to land in the cup first?
The reality is that many sperm are reaching the egg and have to eat away at the outer lining before one can fertilize it. While the process will undoubtedly weed out the slowest and nonfunctional sperm, there will be several fully functional sperm that make it to the egg. So it’s more a process of, “Weed out the obviously bad sperm, and then choose randomly from the ones that are left” than “The sperm that fertilizes it is the absolute best of the bunch.”
Read up on the Shettles method. TL;DR- there are many factors that influence which sperm fertilizes the egg and by manipulating these factors, you can increase the likelihood of having a boy or a girl.
I don’t think there is a universal definition of “best sperm”. Depending on the environmental factors (e.g., when the egg was released, acidity of the vagina), the fastest sperm COULD get to the egg first (though according to the other comments, that’s no guarantee that it’ll be the one to fertilize the egg) or the slower but more resilient sperm could get to the egg first.
Assuming they’re all genetically fit, it matters which sperm gets there because the sperm determines the gender of the child. If they’re not all genetically fit, it matters because the embryo may not be viable if fertilized with a bad (I don’t know the proper terminology) sperm. There are probably a lot of other ways in which it matters that I don’t know enough to talk about.
If we assume that sperm speed and quality is determined by the genes contained in that sperm, then it’s likely that high quality sperm will result in offspring who also have high quality sperm.
But there’s probably no correlation between sperm quality and other traits in the offspring.
TLDR: fast sperm create babies who grow up to have fast sperm (or who carry the trait, in the case of girls).
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