According to Human sperm swim upstream 'in a shoal', sperm cells work together as a team rather than in competition. Swimming as a shoal give boost to sperm to succeeds in fertilizing the egg.
I think that we all have experienced times when we were in team. I am one of people who love working as a group. Working as a group or team always make our task easier. I learn to plan and organize in team. I always meet new people and know each other. Sharing of ideas is important thing of working as a team. When I was in Peter’s class, I always want to work as a group. I usually lack of self-confidence, so I want to make sure that my ideas are wrong or not. We have all heard the phrase “two heads are better than one”, but I need seventeen head when I have to answer Peter’s questions. A team environment can boost the confidence of me and my friends to do our best work.
However, there are disadvantages of working in a team. My teacher say that “too many chefs spoil the soup.” Sometime working as a team may start a conflict; in addition, people become unwilling to open their minds to other ideas. Some of my friends can’t leave their egos and don’t open their mind.
No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. ~H.E. Luccock
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It looks another "common knowledge" belief has been proven wrong, or at least subject to doubt. I, too, share the belief that sperm compete. It sounds reasonable, and it fits with evolutionary theory. Maybe this belief of mine really is wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not 100% sure about the new findings that Bank has reported, and the researcher's language was very careful, using phrases like could be.
Even if there is cooperation, does that mean there isn't also competition? The group sharing the same mix of genetic material from the father all lose if fertilization does not occur, so perhaps they cooperate to get the whole group into the right place, after which competition results in only one successful fertilization.
As always, what we don't know is more than what we do know. And the only way to make progress is to ensure that the wrong ideas can be stated so that they can be corrected: a good example of why free speech is essential in academic work as it is in every other area where we want our opinions to be well-founded and not full of blindly believed falsehoods that cannot be corrected.
I also like Bank's comment that to make progress towards better opinions, it's necessary to open our minds - I like to find the strongest arguments against my beliefs to test how strong my opinions are. If I can answer the opposing arguments, my opinions are more likely to be right. If I can't answer the strong opposing arguments, perhaps I'm wrong and should change my mind. If I just ignore the opposing ideas, then my own ideas are unchecked and perhaps easily proven false.
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