Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Would elephant sperm be bigger than mice sperm?

Just curious.Would elephant sperm be bigger than mice sperm?
Based on this paper (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article鈥?/a> there seems to not be too much variation in the size of sperm across mammals. A mouse, Mus musculus, has a sperm head length of 8.1 microns while Human sperm has a head length of 5.0 microns and an Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, has a sperm head length of 7.5 microns.





The table located here: http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lindeman鈥?/a>


clearly seems to show that it is mostly volume or # of sperm that mainly changes with body size, where a mouse puts out around 50 million sperm on average while male humans put out around 280 million.Would elephant sperm be bigger than mice sperm?
No. The biggest sperm in the world belongs to the tiny fruit fly named Drosophila bifurca. It is about 2 inches long uncoiled. Mice have 80-micron long sperm. Human sperm is half that size. PIC http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/Arc鈥?/a>
The two first respondents have answered your question. Interestingly the largest sperm produced by any living thing is the sperm of a cycad, a gymnosperm! It is large enough to be seen without a microscope and has many flagella to propel it to the egg.
Would their sperm taste the same?

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