How fast do sperm swim and how do they find the egg?

Answer

Chris - Well the answer is about 5 mm per minute, and it's in fact, five body lengths of the sperm per second.

So if you scaled them up to the size of a salmon, that would be the equivalent of the salmon swimming along at 500 miles an hour, or a whale doing 15,000 miles an hour.*

So the sperm are pretty snappy. They get to the egg pretty fast, certainly within a day or so.

How do they find the egg? They recognise it by two means: one is a thermal gradient. They follow temperature so they know that the body gets warmer the further in they go. So they follow the thermal gradient. The second is that the egg oozes out various attractive molecules, in the same way that various inflammatory things attract the immune system in. This pulls the sperm towards the egg because they follow their noses, quite literally...

[*Thank you to the visitor who pointed out that this is a slight exaggeration!]

Comments

yummy

Permalink Submitted by sperm lover (not verified) on Thu, 09/06/2022 - 00:03

very delicious

Sperm

Permalink Submitted by Bob the Sperm (not verified) on Mon, 22/02/2021 - 23:25

Sperm bois much speed

SPERM BOYYYYYYY

Permalink Submitted by SPERM MAN (not verified) on Fri, 19/02/2021 - 01:27

THANKS FOR THE USEFUL INFO

Sperm

Permalink Submitted by Pain (not verified) on Wed, 14/10/2020 - 01:57

They swim kinda fast yo.

Interested in...

Permalink Submitted by DorothyCargY (not verified) on Tue, 22/01/2019 - 14:34

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Gonal F injection for Azoospermia patient

Permalink Submitted by Ananth (not verified) on Wed, 25/07/2018 - 18:40

I am azoospermia patient..

I underwent process and currently using Gonal F and my average sperm count is 20 to 40 millions and sperm morality is also above 20.

If I stop using Gonal F is there any chances for me to getting square to azoospermia.

Please help me out.

Regards,
Ananth Kulkarni

Salmons swimming at 500 mph

Permalink Submitted by Chris1712 (not verified) on Thu, 14/12/2017 - 16:58

An adult salmon is typically 4 feet long. Swimming five such body lengths per second means swimming 20 feet per second. That's about 13.6 mph, and although it would be very impressive for a human to swim that fast, it's nowhere near 500 mph.