Saturday, July 25, 2015

THE WORLD'S LARGEST SPERM



The male Drosophila bifurca fruit fly produces individual sperm cells that are about 5.8 centimeters (over two inches) long. This is over 1,000 times the length of human sperm, which are generally about 55 microns. It is also twenty times the length of the animal itself (imagine a six-foot tall human with a 120-foot long sperm cell). 

If you are wondering how this is physically possible, it is because each fruit fly sperm is really, really coiled up and there are not that many of them--like maybe only 50 per fruit fly ejaculation compared to up to 1.2 billion per human.

For a view of a fruit fly sperm cell, click here.

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