sperm facts
Posted: August 17, 2003, 4:40 pm
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/133356_male04.html
LET'S GET A FEW THINGS STRAIGHT
The typical young man has three hours worth of erections daily, mainly during sleep.
All men over 50 have more estrogen than any post-menopausal woman.
It's a myth that bald men have more testosterone.
Most male mammals have a bone to help support their erect penis. Humans rely totally on fluid mechanics.
The average penis is 5.87 inches long, according to an American condom maker.
The blue whale's 10-foot-long penis is the longest in the animal world.
A quarter-million Americans each year use paternity tests to settle child-support disputes. In three out of four cases, the alleged father is shown to be the biological parent.
Thanks to the aging population of the Western world, erectile dysfunction will double in the next two decades, to 300 million cases worldwide.
Only one in 10 cases of erectile dysfunction comes to medical attention.
A good meal can slightly raise a man's testosterone level. The emotion of a sports victory can send it soaring. (And a loss can make it plummet.)
The same haplotype -- the legacy of a single individual -- is shared by half of all American Indian males, hinting at how few ancient travelers made it across the Bering Strait.
Sperm counts differ by region. New York outproduces rural Minnesota, but both exceed California. Finns rank higher than Parisians, and Danes have the lowest sperm counts in Europe.
A turkey makes a droplet of semen barely visible to the naked eye. A certain type of zebra produces half a gallon.
Snakes have two penises, used alternately, but newts get by without even one. They make a bag of sperm that their partners pick up.
Copulation takes, on average, seven seconds for chimps, a minute for gorillas and four minutes for humans. Hedge sparrows take one-tenth of a second.
Sperm comes in many forms -- amoebalike structures in worms, spiral-shaped in some birds, spherical in some insects, starlike and explosive in crabs.
Beards may grow faster the day before an expected sexual encounter.
Prolactin, the hormone involved in milk production, may rise in fathers as they bond with their infants.
LET'S GET A FEW THINGS STRAIGHT
The typical young man has three hours worth of erections daily, mainly during sleep.
All men over 50 have more estrogen than any post-menopausal woman.
It's a myth that bald men have more testosterone.
Most male mammals have a bone to help support their erect penis. Humans rely totally on fluid mechanics.
The average penis is 5.87 inches long, according to an American condom maker.
The blue whale's 10-foot-long penis is the longest in the animal world.
A quarter-million Americans each year use paternity tests to settle child-support disputes. In three out of four cases, the alleged father is shown to be the biological parent.
Thanks to the aging population of the Western world, erectile dysfunction will double in the next two decades, to 300 million cases worldwide.
Only one in 10 cases of erectile dysfunction comes to medical attention.
A good meal can slightly raise a man's testosterone level. The emotion of a sports victory can send it soaring. (And a loss can make it plummet.)
The same haplotype -- the legacy of a single individual -- is shared by half of all American Indian males, hinting at how few ancient travelers made it across the Bering Strait.
Sperm counts differ by region. New York outproduces rural Minnesota, but both exceed California. Finns rank higher than Parisians, and Danes have the lowest sperm counts in Europe.
A turkey makes a droplet of semen barely visible to the naked eye. A certain type of zebra produces half a gallon.
Snakes have two penises, used alternately, but newts get by without even one. They make a bag of sperm that their partners pick up.
Copulation takes, on average, seven seconds for chimps, a minute for gorillas and four minutes for humans. Hedge sparrows take one-tenth of a second.
Sperm comes in many forms -- amoebalike structures in worms, spiral-shaped in some birds, spherical in some insects, starlike and explosive in crabs.
Beards may grow faster the day before an expected sexual encounter.
Prolactin, the hormone involved in milk production, may rise in fathers as they bond with their infants.
