On a human the balls are basically connected to the penis, but on a bull, the balls are extremly far back on the body, the sperm has to travel at least three feet to get the to the penis, plus however long the penis is (on bulls it is quite long).
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the balls to be on the bulls stomach right beside penis, like it is with the human/cat, so the sperm don’t have to travel as far (On those animals, the balls are right beside the penis, although not on the stomach, ).
There seems to be an assumption here that someone or something is “designing” nature as efficiently as possible. There are several things on the human body that would be more efficent if there were moved over a few inches ect…the way i see it is things evolve the way they evolve (which is not always perfectly). I know not everyone would want to see this, but can someone link a pic? I’ve never heard this about bulls and it has sparked my intrest.
A bull’s nuts are where they need to be, near the base of the penis. You may be under the impression the base is in the middle of the bull’s belly but that’s just where it emerges. His wang-dang-doodle would be much less functional if it emerged nearer the base as ours do. It’s suited to doing the nasty bovine style. It may seem a long journey to you but there isn’t a shorter route.
You may note that a horse’s penis emerges closer to the base. I’d wager this is because horses have much greater agility and a bigger leg length to body size ratio than cattle.
You are also working under the flawed assumption that the sperm travel in a straight line from the testes to the penis so that a penis located close to the testicles means a shorter distance to travel. That simply isn’t true.
This is a classic example of the lack of design that That Guy was talking about. The testicles are embryonically derived from precisely the same tissues that produce the ovaries, and they clearly evolved from testicles that occupied a common position as seen in the reptiles. However in mammals it has become necessary for the testicles to be located outside the body for temperature regulation. What this has led to is the ridiculous situation where the testicles develop in the same location as the ovaries and then migrate southward, dragging the plumbing with them. The top of the plumbing (vas deferens) remains located firmly located in the same location as the embryonic ovaries and the sperm needs to travel a course that describes over 360 degrees in order to exit the body. In other words it travels in complete circle between the testes and the penis and wastes a lot of time travelling.
If conservation of energy and minimisation of travelling time were important this would not be the system one would design. The sperm do need some travelling time in the plumbing in order to become primed, but you only need to look at the way the plumbing extends over the pubic bone, waiting to be crushed and is completely knotted around the bladder and ureter to see the current system is unnecessarily messy. That’s because the migration didn’t occur with design. It could have migrated behind the ureter and pubic bone and been much less convoluted and prone to problems. But the location of the ovaries in quadripeds meant that the forward migration was what evolved.
As you can see form this picture (http://muextension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/ansci/g02016.htm ) bulls have inherited the same system, where the sperm need to travel all the way up to the location of the embryonic ovaries and then back down to the penis doing a complete circle and a half. Locating the testicles further forward or the penis further back wouldn’t do anything at all to shorten the overall distance.
Which brings me to the final point. The testicles in mammals are inevitably located between the legs to prevent injury. Crushing ones nuts is evolutionary suicide. So the location isn’t really open to selection even if there were the advantage you see did exist, which it does not.
In terms of energy efficiency, sure, it might not be optimum. But, likewise, it’s energy inefficient to have the female’s uterus placed deeply within her body, to require humping, to require mounting, etc. In the ideal case, the bull could just lick a spot on the female’s body and - woohoo! - near instantaneous insemination.
There’s no real way to know, factually, why things have evolved the way that they have. But we might assume, for example, that there’s a balancing act going on.
You don’t want the cows to be pregnant so easily and so often that it’s hard on their bodies and ability to reproduce more than once. It should require a bit of effort; the bull’s testicles need to not hit nor tear on rocks, branches, and shrubs that he’s running over; the bull’s testicles shouldn’t get squeezed to nothing by its own thigh muscles; the bull’s testicles should be in a relatively safe position; the bull’s testicles should be able to maintain a comfortable temperature for semen preservation; and so on.
Evolution doesn’t require efficiency and it accepts compromises. There’s more to life than making babies, like eating. Eating requires locomotion, so you need to be able to do that. Locomoting efficiently requires a certain body layout and that layout might not be ideal for mating. Somewhere, you need to compromise on things.
Dairy cows are. Beef animals usually spend all their lives on range land, only being brought in during weaning (separating calves from mommas), and then to the feedlot for fattening just before butchering. AI for semi-feral cattle isn’t practical; a bull is turned in with the cows at the appropriate time. That’s why cowhorses and cowboys still exist, they manage semi-feral beef cattle in open country.
