THE Sperm and the egg - Essay Example

Sean the Sperm and Maggie the Egg ‘Sean the Sperm’ is an optimistic and vigorous sperm cell made of genetic materialscollectively known as DNA and though his kind is said to be the smallest of cells in the human body, Sean is distinct for possessing a tail that beats so he could swim. The journey of Sean initiates after he is formed in the male gonads or the testicles then he swims along with other sperms into the epididymis, a tightly-coiled tube designed for receiving sperm cells via the efferent ducts.

While surrounded by millions of other sperm cells that occur to press him to the walls of the testis at that moment, Sean never loses heart believing that his destiny is within reach and after all, the moderate temperature of about 35-C keeps him warm and kicking since the scrotum which makes this possible lies outside of the male’s body. As sperm cells rush through a thin vessel called the vas deferens, they are transported from the edididymis and Sean could and feel how tough it has been to try to pass along a region that barely contains liquid.

This struggle is soon over as he and the rest get into the prostate glands whose milky secretions help them proceed with the wiggling action once again. Because Sean keeps a positive attitude, he finds it rather conducive to swim all the more with the help of the semen whereas some of the other sperm cells become tired, feeling hopeless that only the fittest among them could make it. Nevertheless, the chemicals constituting them are recycled in the man’s body to aid their motility all the way to the middle portion of the man’s penis then at the end of the urethra, these millions of sperm cells were released via the ejaculatory ducts in the process called ejaculation.

Maggie the Egg, on the other hand, is a big round egg cell whose center consisting of genetic material is surrounded by a nutrient-rich jelly-like substance. She begins her life or oogenesis as an ovum in a woman’s ovary but feels lonely for being the only egg cell that the woman would release that month in a process called ovulation. The immature egg cells left behind would have to wait on their time to be ripe for release. After Maggie gets released from the ovary, she travels down the very long fallopian tube and tumbles very slowly along the oviduct as the man bearing Sean and the woman bearing Maggie in romantic mood decides to make love.

During their sexual intercourse, Sean the Sperm swims out of the man’s penis and inside the woman’s vagina. Approximately less than half of the sperm cells released including Sean manage to make it to the woman’s uterus. There are about six thousand sperm cells left within 24 hours when sexual intercourse is through. Thirty hours later, since some of the sperm cells have taken paths toward unsuitable oviduct, only a few hundred sperm cells are left. Sean understands that only healthy sperm cells that are capable of surviving the acidic environment of the female reproductive system would win the prize in the end.

Eventually, Sean the Sperm meets Maggie the Egg at a spot in the fallopian tube and the union is so special that they name it fertilization. Without any further need for his tail, Sean’s head with all its genetic material content comes in contact with that of Maggie’s forming a single diploid cell known as zygote or zygocyte. As a consequence, the woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child nine months later.ReferenceVan Gelder, Tom. “The Human Egg Cell and Sperm.” Phenomenology.

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