Shhhhh.... Let the music play!

Humans are known to find and get attracted towards their own kind.. same color, same religion, clan, etc etc .. but a new set of experiments showed how sperms (little guys which comes outta male organs) can also find their brothers and get attached to them. Check the following picture out before I give you the interesting details:


Yup.. these are sperms stuck together. So first the terms:

Brothers: Sperms belonging to same male

(Yup! Thats the only term you need to understand.)

So what did scientist do?

• They took set of rats.
• Dyed their sperms in different colors to glow under UV light (now dying sperm is an interesting topic in it self which we will explore some other time).
• Placed different sets of sperms of different males in different combination in the petri dish along with an egg.
• Observed what they did.

Sperm's Common Goal:

• To get to the egg as soon as possible and be the best love machine

Results:

• Sperms from different males when placed together found their brothers, got stuck to them and then draft, Lance Armstrong-style, moving faster than they could alone thanks to more "engine" power from the cluster.
• However, when they reach the egg, they again become sworn enemies like before.
• When they were placed in the petri dish with out their brothers, they found their closest cousins and did the same as above.

Why is it cool?

• Sperms are so smart man! There is more to them than what we gave them credit for.
• Genetic Algorithms: These rules can also be applied to genetic algorithms and see how they perform.
  
• Quoted: "The results support the long-held view that competition drives the evolution of sperm behavior".

Experiment's Limitations:

• Not sure if human sperms behave the same. May be they are smarter, maybe they are dumber
• The experiment was done in a petri dish, not sure if they will behave the same in the womb
• Quote: "the study examines just one promiscuous and one monogamous species." So again, it does not imply that all mammal's little guys are this smart.

So who did this shit?

Evolutionary geneticist at Harvard University's Hoekstra Laboratory.

Where can you read more on this shit?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100421-glowing-sperm-brothers-cooperation-evolution/