geekosystem

Time for a little real talk, gentlemen. Over the last couple of decades, the overall quality of sperm has simply dropped off, and according to a study published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, we probably have no one but our lazy-ass selves to blame. It turns out that a lifestyle in which we sit on our keisters drinking beer and playing video games all day renders our sperm just as lazy as we are. The good news is that regular, vigorous physical exercise could be just what the doctor ordered for restoring the vitality of our sperm. The bad news, of course, is that we stopped listening to that sentence after the phrase "regular, vigorous exercise," which is clearly a non-starter as far as lifestyle choices go.

Since they spend their entire lives glued to one spot -- be it a rocky shore or the hull of your uncle's fishing boat -- barnacles have had to develop breeding techniques that let them get a little action without leaving the comfort of home. Those techniques, from the hermaphroditism that is common in most barnacle species to the enormous penises -- as long as four times the length of their own body -- boasted by the creatures have long fascinated researchers studying sex in the animal kingdom. One species of barnacle, though, has just been found to demonstrate a never-before-seen sexual behavior that will have biology students giggling into their textbooks for years to come. The practice, in which barnacles produce sperm and simply fling it into the water hoping for the best, is known as spermcasting, and if it's found to be widespread in other species, it could rewrite the book on barnacle sex.

A male birth control pill has been the subject of scientific curiosity for a while, and a new study has found that rather than killing the sperm or preventing their existence, a male contraceptive pill might be the product of preventing the sperm from swimming.

We've discovered evidence of fossilized sperm before. Let that soak in for a moment. Now paleontologists have found what's being described as the "richest" evidence of fossilized sperm to date. The evidence was discovered in a large batch of prehistoric ostracods -- which makes sense as their sperm can end up ten times as large as their body. Overall, it's a great time for science, don't you think?

Every self-respecting man has a certain affection for his swimmers. Your sperm is the best sperm, the most virile sperm, a real sperm's sperm. It's only natural to feel a certain swelling pride in your reproductive material, at least, I think it is. Well fellas, I've got a fun fact to feed into your evolutionary boastfulness; your sperm can do calculus. Ladies, it's a little unclear whether or not your sperm can do calculus. You'd have to have sperm in order for us to find out.

Adding to the ever growing list of what stem cells can do, researchers as Kyoto University in Japan have created fully functional sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, that resulted in the birth of viable offspring. Researchers used the sperm they created to fertilize mouse eggs in the laboratory, that were then implanted as embryos into surrogate mothers. This is the first time an animal has been born from sperm that was made from stem cells. For years, scientists have been trying to make viable sperm and eggs cells from embryonic stem cells because it could be a ground breaking treatment for infertility. However, until now all attempts at making sperm from embryonic stem cells had failed to result in offspring. Since 2009, the team from Kyoto University has been working on this problem, and devised a special method for making the cells viable.