[img]http://www.newscientist.com/img/misc/ns_logo.jpg[/img]
[release]Abandon the rat race at your peril. Naked mole rat colonies contain just one sexually active male – and the lack of competition has left its sperm shrivelled and sluggish.
Liana Maree of the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, South Africa, and colleagues took sperm from captive naked mole rats and subjected them to a battery of tests.
Only 7 per cent of the sperm actually moved, and they swam at around 35 micrometres per second – possibly the slowest sperm of any mammal.
"The reason they look so ugly and swim so slowly is there is no sperm competition," says Maree. Naked mole rats live in colonies dominated by the queen, who chooses one male at a time to mate with. She suppresses the reproductive instincts of every other male in the colony. Because the chosen male has exclusive mating rights, he can afford to produce sperm that will dawdle on their way to the egg.
"The authors have done a pretty good job of arguing that inbreeding is not driving the sperm degeneration, because the colonies they sourced sperm from were specifically outbred," says Matthew Gage at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. "It just goes to show how very important sperm competition is as an evolutionary force acting on sperm form and function."
"The naked mole rat is actually a very good model for what happens in humans," Maree says. Previous studies have found faster sperm in more promiscuous species. Humans are relatively monogamous, so sperm competition is fairly low and abnormalities are common. Typically, about 60 per cent of human sperm are motile, compared with 95 per cent in more promiscuous species.
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[url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21240-naked-mole-rats-make-deformed-sluggish-sperm.html]Source[/url]
[quote]colleagues took sperm from captive naked mole rats and subjected them to a battery of tests.[/quote]
oh man
They had to do a study to prove rodent jizz is nasty? Tax dollars hard at work right there folks.
good to know
Thanks for the tip, I can make a lot of use out of this
Sperm Olympics
Lazy animals have lazy sperm?
So, is the opposite true? Is cheetah sperm really fast?
Things that have to compete and bang a lot of females have fast sperm, so like that breed of mouse that has 8 hours of life and spends 7 hours of it banging probably has the fastest sperm in the world.
[QUOTE=Badunkadunk;33591165]Things that have to compete and bang a lot of females have fast sperm, so like that breed of mouse that has 8 hours of life and spends 7 hours of it banging probably has the fastest sperm in the world.[/QUOTE]
What are you some sort of animal semen/sex expert
wow you are fucking creepy
8 Posts in 10 minutes? Sensationalist headlines at work, people.
[editline]5th December 2011[/editline]
Or this creepy dude.
[QUOTE=Badunkadunk;33591165]Things that have to compete and bang a lot of females have fast sperm, so like that breed of mouse that has 8 hours of life and spends 7 hours of it banging probably has the fastest sperm in the world.[/QUOTE]
Wait a minute, Mole Rat sperm [i]nasty?[/i].
Who would have thought.
Thanks for the info, I would have never thought it was nasty.
God damn I don't know how scientists don't get grossed out when doing this shit. I mean come on...Mole sperm? What the fuck man.
[thumb]http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/3/3c/Mole_rat_FO3.png[/thumb]
No wonder why it's nasty.
[img]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2011/12/Sperm.gif[/img]
Run, it's gonna get you!
Now I feel dirty for looking up photos of naked mole rat sperm.
[QUOTE=LegndNikko;33591240][IMG]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XCzia86OiwM/TY_EF1hU3KI/AAAAAAAAABE/2Jh29pKTnMg/s1600/rufus.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]So that's why they don't have hair!
I just realized my OP says I was using internet explorer when I was clearly not.
What the fuck?
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;33601571]I just realized my OP says I was using internet explorer when I was clearly not.
What the fuck?[/QUOTE]
Suuure you weren't...
Also, what the fuck is this study? I can just imagine a group of scientists spending their days bent over countless sperm samples.
This was a very helpful study and the scientists spent their time and money very well.
[QUOTE=Sumap;33591366][img]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2011/12/Sperm.gif[/img]
Run, it's gonna get you!
Now I feel dirty for looking up photos of naked mole rat sperm.[/QUOTE]
Actually, those are some incredibly malformed sperm. Half of them are too thin, one has no tail, and one has two heads. It's amazing there are any naked mole rats at all.
How did they extract it?
Did they uh... jerk it?
My life is complete knowing this information. I hope the people commited to this hallowed advancement of science do as well.
ITT: mole rat spermologists
[QUOTE=MangoJuice;33603033]How did they extract it?
Did they uh... jerk it?[/QUOTE]
they extracted it with their mouth then put a microscope on their tounge
I read it as 'Mole Rat Sperm found in Pasty'
I mentioned it a while ago in another thread that mentioned the species. Glaber happened to post in the thread, which made it occur to me that the animals binomial is Heterocephalus Glaber. I can't picture the naked mole rat without thinking about conservatism.
[QUOTE=Biotoxsin;33605384]I mentioned it a while ago in another thread that mentioned the species. Glaber happened to post in the thread, which made it occur to me that the animals binomial is Heterocephalus Glaber. I can't picture the naked mole rat without thinking about conservatism.[/QUOTE]
Heterocephalus Glaber having poor deformed sperm?
Even nature [img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/zing.png[/img]s glaber!
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;33601571]I just realized my OP says I was using internet explorer when I was clearly not.
What the fuck?[/QUOTE]
it does that from time to time
I think once I saw IE5 on Vista, though that could have been a useragent spoofer.
oh i thought naked mole rat was a sexual innuendo
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