I need to know how fast sperm swim. I think a MPH answer would help. I think the answer was on TLC yesterday at around 2:00P.M. If there are varying speeds, I need to know their speed at the time of ejaculation.
Thanks
Sperm Motility. Motility (the speed and quality of movement) is graded on a 1 to 4 ranking system. Grade 1 sperm wriggle sluggishly and make little forward progress. Grade 2 sperm move forward, but they are either very slow or do not move in a straight line. Grade 3 sperm move in a straight line at
a reasonable speed and can home on an egg accurately. Grade 4 sperm are as accurate as Grade 3 sperm, but move at terrific speed. Sperm that clump together may indicate that antibodies to the sperm are present. This test may be particularly valuable for predicting the success of artificial insemination although less useful for those are candidates of the ICSI fertilization technique, in which the sperm is inserted directly into the egg and motility plays almost no role.
You might do better if you remembered the name of the program.
Various research and their answers can be found at Speed of Sperm
A good estimate would be 8 inches an hour.
Wouldn’t a grade one sperm be useless? It could get beat to the egg by every other type!
Sleep through those Saturday AM cartoons? What if the egg was not ready and every single sperm arrived at the same time? Sometimes the tortoise wins.
Nope. If there’s an egg to be found, it is ready. It wouldn’t leave the ovary if it wasn’t ready.
Yup, it is useless.
It’s the law of averages. If a man makes, say, 10,000,000 sperm, all of them can’t be grade 4. There isn’t that high of a quality assurance in making sperm, but there doesn’t need to be, because there are millions made at a time. So, some are grade 4, grade 3, grade 2, and grade 1. It’s not worth the time or energy to weed out the 1’s, since they won’t make it to the egg anyway.
Who cares, I know I was the fastest, or smartest. I beat out a couple of million other guys. Damn, that feels good! How often do you ever beat out a million other guys in something. Damn, that feels good!
Actually, I heard a way that grade 1 sperm can be useful. I heard that there are two major kinds of sperm that a man produces. The first kind are the ones that seek out an egg to fertilize it. The second kind are meant to stay behind near the cervix, and form a sort of barrier to block other sperm. That way, if a woman were to have sex with two men on the same day, much of the second man’s sperm would be blocked by the grade 1 (and maybe 2) sperm. Don’t quote me on any of this; it’s just something saw on TV once.
So it takes a million sperm to fertilize one egg because: