Eli5: Would any of the 250 million sperm I outraced into existence, have been, in any meaningful way different different than I turned out?

Question

We often hear the metaphor, “out of the millions of sperm, you won the race!” Or something along those lines. But since the sperm are caring copies of the same genetic material, wouldn’t any of them have turned out to be me?

(Excluding abiotic factors, of course)

In: Biology

Answer 1

The thing is, they don’t carry the exact same genetic material. It’s mixed up when each sperm cell is created, which is what made sexual reproduction a success in the first place – diversity.

And even if they did carry the exact same genes, like real-world identical twins do, they all agree that they’re not the same person.