SoylentNews

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

for jan

Here’s how fruit flies' giant sperm squeeze into tight spaces [sciencenews.org]:

Giant sperm may be the ultimate packers.

Inside male fruit flies, thousands of sperm ­— each about as long as the fruit fly itself [sciencenews.org] ­— cram into sacs roughly the size of a very fine pen tip. And somehow this jiggling mass of gigantic sperm stays snarl-free.

“How does a fly manage to do that?” asks Jasmin Imran Alsous, a quantitative biologist at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Think about how hard it is to keep a pocketful of earbud wires tidy, she says. And with flies, the puzzle is further complicated by the movement of the sperm themselves. The question isn’t just how to store long, thin wires in a container, she says. It’s how to do so while the wires are moving.

Alsous and her colleagues discovered that fly sperm pack so well by aligning into an orderly formation, forming a living liquid crystal [biorxiv.org], the researchers report July 23 at bioRxiv.org. The sperm line up and move in opposing directions, forming a crystalline-like material that can flow like a fluid, says Michael Shelley, an applied mathematician also at the Flatiron Institute. The sperm and their ever-whipping tails avoid tangling by constantly pushing off each other. This detangling strategy lets the sperm bundle densely inside the fly’s seminal vesicles, the sacs that store mature sperm before ejaculation.

More Stories from Science News on Animals [sciencenews.org]

1. Animals [sciencenews.org] This lizard can tolerate extreme levels of lead [sciencenews.org]
2. Life [sciencenews.org] Horses may have become rideable with the help of a genetic mutation [sciencenews.org]
3. Animals [sciencenews.org] The mysterious, extinct ‘Fuegian dog’ was actually a semi-tame fox [sciencenews.org]
4. Animals [sciencenews.org] The phoenix isn’t the only critter to survive the flames [sciencenews.org]
5. Animals [sciencenews.org] Frilly bug feet inspire a water-striding robot [sciencenews.org]
6. Animals [sciencenews.org] Around the world, birds sing longer in light-polluted areas [sciencenews.org]
7. Animals [sciencenews.org] These giant carnivorous bats hug, cuddle — and even share dinner [sciencenews.org]
8. Animals [sciencenews.org] Streaked shearwaters poop only while flying over the ocean [sciencenews.org]

Original Submission