How Sperm Is Created

how many sperm cells can you produce in one day that's obviously a very important question and i would argue that even if you don't come equipped with sperm manufacturing plants that this is still important to you because let's be honest if you have ovaries these sperm cells are coming for you and what you produce on a monthly basis so we need to know what type of army we're dealing with here so let's use the cadavers we'll go over exactly what inside the testes produces the sperm cells we'll talk some numbers and even discuss how sperm cells aren't born ready to swim so with all the maturity we can muster let's do this [Music] now most of us have a pretty good idea that sperm is produced in the testes but we want to know exactly what inside is doing all this work so we have a male cadaver here with a right testicular dissection so guys deep breath here we go so this is the right side of the inner thigh or the right groin here and you can see this is the right testis now obviously i've removed that from the scrotal sac but even then you can still see it has a connective tissue covering which we're going to show you that we've removed in just a second then also we have the spermatic cord moving upward or superiorly now the spermatic cord contains veins arteries nerves for blood and nerve supply to and from the testes it also contains a tube called the vas or ductus deferens that vas deferens you may have heard of a mastectomy before transports sperm cells that are produced in the testis up the spermatic cord and eventually outside the body we'll talk a little bit more about the vas deferens a little bit later in the video but i want to reflect or turn over the testis here and show our dissection here where we've removed that outer covering of the testis and you can see this is the actual right testis here pretty amazing structure you can even see on top of the testis there's this c-shaped structure here that we'll talk about a little bit fyi it's the epididymis but we'll get into that a little bit later but we need to show the internal anatomy of this right testis here we go look how amazing that is inside and if you look closely in there it almost looks like there's little these little stringy type things here and these little stringy things are tiny little tubes that are in each testis and these little stringy tubes are called the seminiferous tubules there are up to 900 of these in each testis that's why again it looks like little stringy things they're tiny and these seminiferous tubules are where sperm cells are produced now the process of sperm cell production is referred to as spermatogenesis and we know spermatogenesis occurs in these seminiferous tubules and i want you to think of these tiny little seminiferous tubules as little tiny hoses and we know if you took a hose you know the wall of the hose typically made of rubber and then we have the inside of the hose where there would be fluid flowing through we call the inside hollow space the lumen but the wall of these seminiferous tubules is where all the magic happens because embedded in the wall are these stem cells that actually produce the sperm cells these stem cells have a name they are called spermatogonia which kind of thinks or sounds like this mythical land where maybe we could think of sperm cells being produced by spermatogonia or in the land of matagonia so those from matagonia those stem cells embedded in the wall of the seminiferous tubules are pretty busy and producing sperm at what some may consider an alarmingly high rate they can produce up to 300 million sperm cells in one day if we were to average that out over a day that's approximately 12.5 million per hour 208 000 per minute and about 3 500 per second i just created 3 500 sperm cells and 3 500 more look at me go so before all you males go out there making claims that you create troops at a ridiculous rate we have to first understand that these troops it takes a while for them to develop and they're not born ready to swim or in other words they are non-motile what's crazy to think about is if i go to this dissection these seminiferous tubules that you're seeing in here that development or that spermatogenesis takes up to 65 to 75 days so these are developing within the wall of the tube for 65 to 75 days before they even get into the lumen of the tube and move down to the next structure where they're stored so let's kind of review and put all of that together here so if we take a look at the testis again you can see if we go inside there's all these seminiferous tubules here and here and that's where the spermatogenesis is taking place for 65 to 75 days and specifically just in the wall of the tubule for 65 to 75 days they haven't even made it into the actual hollow space or the lumen but once they hit that point spermatogenesis has occurred 65 to 75 days later the sperm cells will move into the actual lumen so they can move to the next structure in the testis so coming back to this again let's pretend we've moved into the wall of those seminiferous tubules those sperm cells will then get propelled in this direction towards this structure called the epididymis now there's some collecting tubules that we have to go through to get from point a to point b here those seminiferous tubules will first drain into these straight tubules or straight ducts then to the reedy testes and then from the reedy testes to the efferent duct jewels of the testes and finally into the epididymis now once the sperm cells are in the epididymis we used to nickname this place swim academy because this is essentially where the sperm cells become motile or fully mature and again this is this epididymis but what you're not seeing with the naked eye here that there is one really long tube inside this epididymis that if we were to stretch it out it would be over 20 feet long so you can imagine the sperm cells are just moving through this tube passively and then eventually gaining motility and then this is where the sperm cells will be stored until they are called upon so if we're talking about the total timeline here let's say we've got about 65 days in the seminiferous tubules a few days to move from the seminiferous tubules into the epididymis and then up to 14 days moving throughout the epididymis where they fully mature and become motile for adding all that together that can take over 80 days for these troops to be ready from start to finish luckily this is kind of like we said a daily process of like almost 300 million being ready each day so you've got this set of 300 million and this like assembly line of sperm cells just coming and coming and coming each and every day because there is a very important target that these cells need to get and that is the cute little ovum so the last thing i want to mention here once the sperm cells have gone through that 80-day process they've essentially moved down to the inferior aspect of the epididymis where they are waiting to be called upon and they're in close proximity or connected to this other tube called the vas deferens here or the ductus deferens now this ductus defense or vas deferens attaches to the inferior aspect of the epididymis where those mature sperm cells are hanging out so they can easily be propelled into this tube which will eventually take the sperm cells up the spermatic cord and out of the body when they are released now the average male can release anywhere from 2.5 to 5 milliliters of seminal fluid now if you break that down even further one milliliter of seminal fluid can contain anywhere to 50 to 150 million 50 to 150 million sperm cells so let's say you're on the high end and each milliliter of your seminal fluid contains 150 million sperm cells that means during one potential release you could release an army of 750 million sperm cells now that seems like quite the army to release to seek find and fertilize one egg or one of them in the female reproductive tract but the female reproductive tract or this journey the sperm cells go on is a treacherous one and not all these sperm cells will survive and technically typically one fertilizes the egg so i want you guys to think of this from this perspective of you know 2020 was a rough year go with me on this we've all had some moments of sadness depression and feeling down on ourselves but i want you to think about this during male release of sperm cells millions as we saw were released you won the first race of your life so you should be happy about that thanks for watching our video on sperm cell production please like subscribe ring the bell for notifications and as always blow up the comment section below and safe travels to all the sperm cells out [Music] there you

Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 5,267,335

Rating: 4.9131436 out of 5

Keywords: how sperm is made, sperm production, how sperm is made in the human body, what is sperm count, sperm production per day, sperm production cycle, vasectomy, sperm production time, reproductive anatomy, how is sperm produced, what is sperm, spermatogenesis, spermatogonia, seminiferous tubules, vas deferens, ductus deferens, rete testis, epididymis, teste, testis, efferent ductules of testis, human anatomy, real human body, institute of human anatomy, how much sperm per day

Id: Fwmx0HdV1wM

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

If I was the best spermatozoon, I feel sorry for the worst.

[u/djice100]

I love how informative this was.