Question

How many sperms are found in a single, typical ejaculate?

Answer 1

Sperm is a male reproductive cell that fertilizes with the female reproductive cell to produce an offspring. It is haploid in nature.

Complete answer:
1.When a person ejaculates the quantity of semen released is around 5 milliliters. The semen contains around 100 million sperms.
2.Semen contains sperms along with other enzymes that are necessary for transportation and movement of sperm like fructose, etc and the semen is released by the sexual glands also known as gonads of the male reproductive system.
3.Sperms are very small cells that are released into the vagina of the female during coitus, the pH of the vagina is acidic due to which most of the sperms cannot make it to the uterus and very few of them successfully reach the uterus of the female reproductive system.
4.The cervix present near the vagina is covered by mucus and some of the sperms are entangled in the mucus and hence cannot travel further into the female reproductive tract.
5.Also the female reproductive system has two oviducts and the female reproductive cell that is ovum is present in only one of the oviduct but some of the sperm can also reach another oviduct where there is no ovum.
6.Due to all these factors, the male produces a large number of sperms to increase the chances of fusion of sperm and the ovum.

Note: The ovum has an outer thick and transparent layer that is known as the zona pellucida layer which is made up of glycoproteins and only one of the sperm is successful in decomposing the zona pellucida layer with the help of enzymes and finally that one sperm fuses with the ovum hence leading to fertilization.