Sperm

Introduction

It is assumed that a persons self or I, as well other personal characteristics, is determined by the unique combination of a specific sperm cell fertilizing a specific egg cell. A different sperm, or a different egg, and a different person is born.

A typical male ejaculation consists of 100 to 500 million sperm cells. Furthermore, a typical male ejaculates a few thousands times during his lifetime, which adds up to a total production of several trillion sperm cells. The typical female is born with one or two million potential egg cells in her ovaries, of which only a few hundred will mature into egg cells, ready for conception.

This webpage is an illustration of 3 million sperm cells, or about one percent of a typical ejaculation.

A unique combination of a specific sperm cell fertilizing a specific egg cell became you, another unique combination became the author of this text. All other combinations would have resulted in somebody else. Take this a few steps further and try to figure out what the odds were that your mother and father met. And what where the odds that your great grandparents had sex at that particular moment, so that your grandmother was born? And so on, for thousands of generations, millions and billions of years back in time.

The chance that you would be born was small indeed. But that is true for all of us. So, if you had not been born, somebody else, with equally low odds to be born, had come into existence, and would have had the same chance to enjoy the mysteries of being alive and being self conscious, that you and I now enjoy.

Lennart Grebelius