It used to be such a widely held belief that one testicle produced boys and the other girls that a co-worker of my father’s, a man absolutely convinced his three daughters were the result of having lost a testicle to mumps as a child, adopted a VietnAmerican war-orphan because they thought it was the only way he would have a son. Afterwards his wife gave birth to a fourth daughter, who was much welcomed, and then a fifth child- their first biological son. He was so convinced she had cheated on him it almost caused a divorce until a doctor assured him, through blood tests and lectures that “it’s not true about testicles and gender”, the son was his. This man was college educated and not stupid, but he honestly believed the “old wive’s tale” because of its verisimilitudinous logic.
So now we know that men with a single testicle can have equal numbers of sons and daughters. However, IS there any difference between sperm produced by one testicle v. the other in the children they produce? Is it known whether a man has a “weak” v. “strong” testicle as far as the number/strength of the sperm produced? Is a man with one testicle more likely to have difficulty fathering children than a man with two? Or is he likely to have less facial hair or other testosterone produced characteristics due to having only one factory in production? (I know that some eunuchs who were castrated after puberty or men who’ve lost testicles to cancer can have full beards and have no real discernible difference “di-ballicle” men.)
This is just something I’ve wondered about occasionally but never asked or researched.
One of my best friends had two kids and was then diagnosed with testicular cancer in one testicle. He and his wife discussed it, and decided they were done with having children. So he had the cancerous one removed.
3 years later, little Allison was born. She’s now 15.
Said friend instantly went out and had the other one snipped.
As to your other question - he’s never been able to grow a decent beard anyway, so can’t help ya there.
It’s a spare. The testicles are (evolutionarily) one of the most important organs in the body, so we have two of them, just in case. A guy with only one ball is just as capable as with two, in every regard.
In recent years it’s been determined that while most sperm cells are capable of fertilizing an egg, many are more designed (I know I’m oversimplifying) as “teammates” to the one that fertilizes- they’re guards even, possibly evolved from a time when women were more likely to have multiple sex partners during a single period of fertility. A study I haven’t looked for but will if somebody needs a cite showed that while most children conceived artificially are healthy there is a statistically significant higher incident of birth defects and this possibly due to the fact that sperm cells which would not naturally be “the Decider” become so in laboratory conditions. That’s why I was wondering if one testicle may produce more of these than the others.
Amazing, incidentally, what a teeny tiny percentage even of reported history we’ve known about just the basics of conception. Leonardo da Vinci would not have known women produced eggs, for example, and neither would most lay people in the American Revolution. Makes me wonder what we believe today that will be laughed at in 2200. (“They had no idea that the Internet was causing children to evolve gills!”)
stereogonady is just a consequence of the arms race with the opposite gender. We need dextro- and levospermatozoa to account for the possibility that the ovum might me on the left or right tube. Give it a few more million years and men will have 5 or more testicles to keep up with the evolution of women who will then have the same number of ovaries (and periods every 12 days). Life is brutal.
(and although it scares me that this might be needed, NO, not really)
THAT’S MY PROBLEM… I’M AHEAD OF MY TIME BY MILLIONS OF YEARS! I’M ENIK! YEAAA… I’M NOT A FREAK!!!
I used to work in a home for the mentally retarded where the guys had essentially no modesty and helping them bathe was a duty. One of the guys, whose retardation was from genetic abnormalities, also had three testicles. If you’ve never seen it (you can google pics as it’s not as rare a thing as you might think), that’s really freaky looking.
No, I’d say this man is proof that the former doesn’t prohibit the latter.
I can forgive somebody for being ignorant about something - all of us have gaps in our knowledge. But if he had become concerned enough about this subject that he was considering leaving his wife over it, he should have taken a moment or two to learn the facts. The fact that he got this deep into a belief that could have been dispelled by ten minutes of online reading indicates that he is indeed stupid.
Note that many of our organs and body parts come in pairs: lungs, kidneys, eyes, nostrils, ears, hands, feet. While there is an evolutionary issue, that’s probably secondary to bilateral symmetry.
While growing up a good friend of mine’s mother told us a story. We were about 14-15 at the time.
It was a story about a young man who was in the Navy who wanted to impress his new girlfriend. To impress her he climbed up a flag pole at his Naval Air Station. When he got to the top of this flagpole, that was estimated to be about 5-6 stories high, he cut the Navy flag loose. With the flag in tow he slid down the flagpole as the love of his life watched. What he didnt take into account were the pair of hooks towards the bottom of the flagpole used to moor the hoisting rope for the flags. As he slid down the pole, a tremendous cry of pain erupted from this poor young fellow. He hit the ground with a thud… As she stood over him she saw something resting on his bloody crotch… It was his… (Excuse me… Ahem… I have to collect myself…) nut.
She then explained that this man was her husband who went on to have four kids with her, and that we were sworn to secrecy about our knowledge. And the moral to the group of young men listening that day was… Never try anything stupid to impress the girls. If they like you, they like you.
[/Hijack]
You have two because it’s always advantageous to have a spare when it comes to propagating the species!
While growing up a good friend of mine’s mother told us a story. We were about 14-15 at the time.
It was a story about a young man who was in the Navy who wanted to impress his new girlfriend. To impress her he climbed up a flag pole at his Naval Air Station. When he got to the top of this flagpole, that was estimated to be about 5-6 stories high, he cut the Navy flag loose. With the flag in tow he slid down the flagpole as the love of his life watched. What he didnt take into account were the pair of hooks towards the bottom of the flagpole used to moor the hoisting rope for the flags. As he slid down the pole, a tremendous cry of pain erupted from this poor young fellow. He hit the ground with a thud… As she stood over him she saw something resting on his bloody crotch… It was his… (Excuse me… Ahem… I have to collect myself…) nut.
She then explained that this man was her husband who went on to have four kids with her, and that we were sworn to secrecy about our knowledge. And the moral to the group of young men listening that day was… Never try anything stupid to impress the girls. If they like you, they like you.
[/Hijack]
You have two because it’s always advantageous to have a spare when it comes to propagating the species!
