Birth, Babies, and Beyond

Pregnancy, birth, and parenting.

by Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D.

What do Chimp Sperm have that Real Men Lack?

Can we learn a thing or two from chimp sperm?

Published on September 22, 2010 by Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D. in Birth, Babies, and Beyond

My friend’s husband threw his back out while providing a sperm sample in the midst of their fertility treatment. He got stuck in the tiny masturbating room, hunched over, sample in hand, screaming for a nurse. (Or really anyone to get him out.) He ended up in one hospital bed getting his back straightened, and she, in another, getting his sperm.

Providing a tube of sperm isn’t always as fun as one would imagine. In Jon Cohen’s new book, Almost Chimpanzee, he describes coaxing sperm to donate. The purpose is to compare chimp and human sperm and figure out why people miscarry so much (about half the time when sperm meets egg) and why chimps rarely do.

The scientists, as Cohen writes in an October Atlantic Monthly piece, tried making a fake female chimp butt and hoped the male chimps would molest it and leave a sample. It didn’t work. Next, they enlisted a female scientist to coax a 16-year-old chimp to ejaculate into a tube. Cohen got to watch. The researcher got the goods and the chimp got one M&M as a reward.

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In the lab, another scientist pointed out that chimp sperms have an acid on their coat, Neu5Gc, that humans lack. And it may be this signal that helps fertilize the egg. Perhaps this scientist is onto something.

When I was researching my book, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, I talked to a neuroscientist who studies sperm. He, too, believes that the signals covering the sperm can make the difference between the loser sperm and the winner—or the one that breaks into the egg. He is eyeing a receptor called, hOR _17-4, that he believes helps the sperm navigate its way to the egg. A sort of GPS system for the sperm.

All of these clues—which really are just clues—may some day shine a light on the troubles with human fertility and may even lead to new and more effective ways to help couples conceive.