Every Sperm Is Super-Sized

And you thought human sex was messy: A paper published in Science yesterday introduces the world to a bunch of tiny, ancient crustaceans that produced relatively massive sperm. And io9.com has pictures! (Don't worry; they're safe for work—and oddly beautiful.)

Researchers in Europe used cutting-edge "synchrotron X-ray holotomography" to non-invasively examine 100-million-year-old fossilized ostracods. The descendants of these millimeter-long creatures produce giant sperm—up to 10 times as big as their bodies, in some cases—and the new fossil images prove that their ancestors had the plumbing to do the same.

Giant sperm can give males a competitive edge when females end up mating with more than one partner; the trait is seen in some bird, insect, worm, and primate species, as well. Thankfully, humans never went down that evolutionary route: To match the aforementioned group of modern ostracods, our brothers would have to produce sperm nearly 56 feet long.

Of course, that's nothing compared to the humble fruit fly. Uncoiled, a Drosophila bifurca sperm measures almost 6 centimeters—or a little more than 130 feet, when scaled up to human size. Takashi Murakami would be proud. (Now, that's not SFW.)