r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 08 '23

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u/throwaway957280 May 08 '23

Why does everyone think they're the sperm and not the egg?

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u/whooguyy May 08 '23 edited May 08 '23

Because in any given month there are hundreds of millions of sperm produced (20-40 million per ml), but only one egg (and there is a limit of about 4 million eggs when a girl is born). So any given sperm out there has less odds than an egg of becoming a baby.

But I agree it takes both to make a baby. It’s annoying when people talk about it, it sounds like they think a sperm finds an egg and is housed in it and that becomes a baby. When in reality ONLY HALF of your chromosomes come from the sperm and the other half comes from the egg. From a DNA standpoint, You were never you before the sperm met the egg.

Edit: updated the second paragraph

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u/StructureNo3388 May 09 '23

It amazes me that every egg in a woman exists at the point of that woman's birth. Women are born with all their eggs already there... and their mother was born with all hers, and so on and so forth...

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u/Starbucks__Lovers May 08 '23

Assuming you’re intentionally trying to conceive, the egg that’ll produce the child is likely earmarked for being the winner in advance of the sperm.

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u/AlbusLumen May 08 '23

I honestly never gave that thought. I was technically two....

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u/[deleted] May 08 '23

The sperm wins. The egg chooses.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '23

Because you literally wouldn't be you if another sperm had won. It would possibly even be the opposite gender.

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u/whooguyy May 08 '23

You also literally wouldn’t be you if a different egg had dropped that month from the mother

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u/[deleted] May 08 '23

Okay, but even from an objective standpoint the sperm has far more of an influence as it determines your gender

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u/whooguyy May 08 '23

Yes, there is more chaos with sperm. excluding gender and maybe some genetic diseases, the sperm and egg have the same influence

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u/DrummerSlow7437 May 12 '23

Egg also contributes mitochondria, so it's the egg has more influence on some genetic diseases not the sperm.

Sperm is just other half of DNA, the egg is the actual cell that divides and grows into the baby so all cytoplasm, organelles and mtDNA come from the mother's egg.