Hannah Lyons

So we were expecting to see changes in most parameters, to be honest.

We were expecting to see a decline in their ability to swim.

We thought we'd see a drop in motility potentially, a drop in potentially their vitality, that they would actually just die not having any gravity, that they wouldn't be very happy.

And we did expect that we wouldn't find as many sperm able to navigate the channel than we would at normal gravity.

Yeah.

So sperm like to swim close to surfaces.

So when you've got like a channel slide, their best swimming will be done at the outer edges of the channel.

And it helps them to navigate to the other end, similar to the way that the female reproductive tract works.

Yeah, yeah.

They, um, they have different modes of swimming.

Sperm do.

So depending on where they sit within a fluid, they'll swim slightly differently.

Depending on how close they are to another surface, they can change their tail patterns.

Um, and yeah, being closer to the edge, they can sense the barrier and they like to swim along it.

And, um, they also like to swim against the flow of fluid.

Yeah, they're probably not as simple as everyone thinks that they are.

They carry a really large repertoire of receptors and sensors that allow them to sense temperature, chemical signatures, force and pressure.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.