I always asked this question. I asked it when I was studying animal reproduction in my baccalaureate course, I asked this when I studied fish reproduction in my Masters, I asked this during my PhD and even today, this question comes back every now and then whenever I see waste. Waste of endeavor, energy, and hard work. Is nature wasteful or in some ways this waste is needful?
The event of fertilization just requires fusion of two nuclei. One from the egg and one from the sperm. This is important to maintain diploid number of chromosomes in the new zygote. If it is any other way, it will give rise to aneuploidy and nature has mechanisms to abort any aneuploid zygote from implantation. Anyways, this is not the point I want to bring to your attention.
Millions of sperms travel a long distance through the vaginal canal and up to the uterus, just to be able to unite with the egg. Millions of them, not knowing who the lucky one would be, take the tedious course and spend a lot of energy just to be able to reach there and do the job. They are all equally potent, none better than the other one, have same genetic make up and coming from the same source. How do you pick the best one? You cannot. All of them are equally good. However, the one that gets chosen is just by chance. It is certainly not because he is better than the other ones. And now is the time for my question, what do the other sperms do? They just give up and die.
In human society people behave the same way. Success comes only to a few people if you measure success by rewards. However, nobody thinks that their other compatriots are equally good. The success they get is just by chance, not because they are better than their peers.
In the sperm example, if you have just one sperm and think that it will fertilize the egg, you are wrong. Yes! you need to have those millions of compatriots with you to be successful. They are important. Their mere presence is important in giving the whole process a culmination. That's why sometimes when I think that encouraging too many scientists or musicians or athletes for that matter is a wasteful spending, you only pick up the talented ones and they will be Nobel laureates, Grammy winners or Olympians...I am wrong. You actually need millions of them and all of them are important to creating a civil, intellectual, progressively social atmosphere for all the humans to live and we should be thankful for their struggles too and not just shower kudos to the award winners. In this case, we should not allow the others to give up and die because society doesn't reward them. We should harbor equal respect to all of them. Just because humans are not sperms!
The event of fertilization just requires fusion of two nuclei. One from the egg and one from the sperm. This is important to maintain diploid number of chromosomes in the new zygote. If it is any other way, it will give rise to aneuploidy and nature has mechanisms to abort any aneuploid zygote from implantation. Anyways, this is not the point I want to bring to your attention.
Millions of sperms travel a long distance through the vaginal canal and up to the uterus, just to be able to unite with the egg. Millions of them, not knowing who the lucky one would be, take the tedious course and spend a lot of energy just to be able to reach there and do the job. They are all equally potent, none better than the other one, have same genetic make up and coming from the same source. How do you pick the best one? You cannot. All of them are equally good. However, the one that gets chosen is just by chance. It is certainly not because he is better than the other ones. And now is the time for my question, what do the other sperms do? They just give up and die.
In human society people behave the same way. Success comes only to a few people if you measure success by rewards. However, nobody thinks that their other compatriots are equally good. The success they get is just by chance, not because they are better than their peers.
In the sperm example, if you have just one sperm and think that it will fertilize the egg, you are wrong. Yes! you need to have those millions of compatriots with you to be successful. They are important. Their mere presence is important in giving the whole process a culmination. That's why sometimes when I think that encouraging too many scientists or musicians or athletes for that matter is a wasteful spending, you only pick up the talented ones and they will be Nobel laureates, Grammy winners or Olympians...I am wrong. You actually need millions of them and all of them are important to creating a civil, intellectual, progressively social atmosphere for all the humans to live and we should be thankful for their struggles too and not just shower kudos to the award winners. In this case, we should not allow the others to give up and die because society doesn't reward them. We should harbor equal respect to all of them. Just because humans are not sperms!
