I’m talking about humans specifically here. During school I was always shown animations that showed many sperm swimming to an egg, and then when the first sperm started entering the egg (don’t even know how they do that, do they eat through?), the other sperm just stopped trying and gave up. How do the other sperm know? Are they sentient? What’s stopping loads of sperm going into the same egg? What would happen if 100 sperm went into the egg at once?
In: Biology
They don’t know anything. But they don’t have to. When the first sperm penetrates the egg cell, it causes a chemical reaction in the membrane that makes it impossible for further sperm cell to also successfully penetrate. They will keep trying but eventually they will just die.
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