The reproductive system: How gonads go

Male: The number one question on the mind of every organism on earth if that organism happens to have a mind is "How do I make more of myself?" It's bigger than all of the questions combined, including, "How am I going to feed myself?" and, "What's the meaning of life?" because from a biological perspective, we know what the meaning of life is. Biology has answered that question. It's reproduction. Different organism go about reproducing in different ways. You can make more of yourself by yourself. A strategy called, asexual reproduction or you can team up with somebody else and make a baby that's genetically different from both of you through sexual reproduction. From liver flukes to pine trees, 99% of eukaryotic organisms on earth use sex to reproduce at least some of the time. That's because creating offspring with a slightly different genome helps the new generation stay one step ahead of pathogens or competitors or if you're the pathogen, it helps you stay ahead of that pesky host that's always trying to kick you out. But still sex is inconvenient and it's a lot of work. First, you got to find somebody to mate with, which means you have to get out of bed and brush your teeth and stuff then if you're an animal, you only have to find somebody who's willing to mate with you and then figure out whether he or she is gonna provide a higher or lower quality genes than yours. Thankfully, and unsurprisingly, animal's reproductive systems have evolved to streamline all of those inconveniences to address one and only one aim, to get your sex cells where they need to be. So, sex, how does it work? I thought you'd never ask. (energetic music) Reproductive systems like all the other systems we've discussed, take on an incredible diversity within kingdom animalia. For instance, some female spiders mate with a bunch of different males and then stash their sperm into different storage units. When she's ready to fertilize her eggs, the female spider will choose which male spider she liked the best and then let his sperm out of the storage unit to fertilize her eggs. Hyenas meanwhile, have a female-dominated social system and it's the alpha female who chooses who she mates with. She has sex using an enlarged sensitive sex organ, a clitoris that looks exactly like a penis called a pseudo penis. The duck's penis can be a quarter of the length of its body and shaped like a corkscrew. Wanna know why? Look it up. Actually, don't. Google that with care. Just don't press play on the video. The point here is while the delivery system's maybe somewhat different from animal to animal, the fundamentals are the same. In order to do the sex, an organism needs to find another of its species that has a different type of gamete or sex cell than their own. Gametes, you'll recall are halploid cells, meaning that they only have one set of chromosomes and they're formed by the process of meiosis. There are only two types of gametes. One is the ovum or egg. In plants, it's called the ovule. The egg is always a large cell that takes a lot of time and energy investment to make and it's usually not very mobile. The other type of gamete, sperm are smaller, a lot more plentiful and easy to make and always more mobile than eggs Most animals have either one or the other type of gamete though hermaphroditic species like garden snails and some flowering plants can produce both. In the magical moment that one of these sperms finds one of those eggs, the two fuse together to create a single diploid cell that has all the instructions to make a new seahorse or secretary bird or whatever it is but let me get your mind right about what we really mean when we talk about sex. Because we, human have external sex organs called genitals, we tend to think of them as key indicators of who's male and who's female but the fact is, genitals are only one byproduct of a much, much more important and fundamental distinction. From a biological perspective, the only thing that make sexes different is that the females produce big, not very mobile gametes and the male makes smaller, much more mobile gametes. Across the spectrum of all things that we produce sexually, that's pretty much the only consistent difference between boys and girls. Therefore, all reproductive systems and reproductive behavior are designed entirely around the production, storage and delivery of these gametes. For instance, because sperm are really mobile, males within a species are generally the more mobile one to go out and find a mate. These are even true for plants. Female gametes of a flowering plant generally stay in one place while the pollen, which ends up producing the sperm, gets picked up by a pollinator or sometimes just sprays out every which way into the wind hoping to bump into the right kind of ovule. In animals, we see all kinds of crazy behaviors where mating is concerned and of course, not every animal goes about courtship in the same way but one thing is pretty consistent, females tend to be pickier about the quality of their mates. Because while a male animal could conceivably fertilize thousands of eggs every year, a female has only a limited number of eggs and she spent a lot of energy developing them. So, she wants them to be fertilized with high quality genes. Plus, in cases where both parents stayed together after fertilization, she also wants those genes to be attached to a high quality provider. This often results in males having to do a lot of showing off in order to get the lady's attention. Males of a species are generally louder, larger, brighter, more combative than the females. Basically, they're putting on a big show so that females can size up how awesome that guy's genes are but for all those differences during the development of the embryo, there are actually very few physical differences between males and females at least at first. You and I, we didn't start out being a male or a female, while we were hanging out in our mom's uteruses, we didn't have a sex at all until about two months. Before that, we had all the pieces to become either male or female but our genes haven't gotten together to determine whether or not our gonads, the glands that make the gametes, were going to become ovaries or testes. In mammals, that decision is made by the sex-determining chromosome. If an offspring has two of the same kind of sex-determining chromosome called XX, it will be female and if it has two different chromosomes XY, it will be male. The same is true for other animals like fruit flies and even some plants like ginkgo trees. However, the opposite is true for birds, boy birds have XX and girl birds have XY. Go figure. In mammals, the default setting for sex is always female. Absent of signal from the Y chromosome, ovaries form and begin working on developing female structures. If there is a Y, the ovaries instead form into testes and parts that would be female, turn into male structure. For instance, the clitoris I mentioned, which is sensitive and has spongy tissue in it, actually becomes part of a penis but it is worth pointing out that by this time, some features are already in place before the sex is determined. Nipples, for instance form before this point so that's why men have them, even though they don't do anything. Now, once the sex is determined, the ovaries and testes pump out estrogen and testosterone. Meanwhile, the brain is growing and creating receptors, organized it differently in males and females that will later determine how both estrogen and testosterone are used by the body. Soon after a baby girl is born, she'll have half formed versions of all the eggs, she's ever going to have for her whole life then at puberty, once a month, one of those eggs will finish forming and be released but for baby boys, the sperm making does not begin until around puberty. Most of the time, when a young animal starts getting close to sexual maturity, secondary sex characteristics crop up. In humans, more body hair appears. Boys, all of a sudden develop facial hair while both sexes get more pubic hair. Also, muscle and fat get redistributed around the body, the most obvious examples being breasts. Other animals, secondary sex characteristics include things like manes on male lions, a big ole funky rack of feathers on male peacocks, antlers on male deer. Males really have the market cornered on fancy, showy, secondary sex characteristics. So, by the time an animal has reached sexual maturity, the males and females of species often look pretty dissimilar not just of each other but of their previous non-sexually developed forms. Basically, showing the world that their different reproductive structures that they're born with, are now in full gear and they've got some really different jobs to do, based on what sex they are. Let's go over how this all works with human people and of course, ladies first. As you know, the gonads of a female embryo turn into two ovaries, one on either side of the uterus with its oviducts/Fallopian tubes reaching out toward them. The ovaries are where those precious eggs are kept. Maybe the biggest difference between women's and men's reproductive setup is that women have a menstrual cycle. Typically, a four-week process in which one egg matures in an ovary and is released to be drawn into the Fallopian tubes, a process called ovulation. If while the egg makes its way down the Fallopian tube to the uterus, a sperm finds it and fertilizes it. There's a chance that the fertilized egg will implant on the endometrium, a tissue layer inside the wall of the uterus and a baby will grow. However, it just [mean] that up to 70% of fertilized eggs don't take hold in the endometrium. This could be because women's bodies have sort of a built-in genetic testing. If something's suspected to be wrong with the growing embryo, the lining of her uterus that she's built up over the past month, will shed and the woman will menstruate as usual. This material leaves the female reproductive system through the narrow lower end of the uterus, the cervix and then out into the muscle-lined track of the vagina. And those are of course, the same structures through which a newborn baby passes and through which the sperm enter. While a woman's body is busy all month developing the next egg, getting it ready for fertilization and shedding her uterine lining if it's not fertilized, males are undergoing a completely different process that calls on a lot of other highly specialized reproductive structures. We start of course, with the testes, which are made up largely of a bunch of coiled tubes called seminiferous tubules, which are where the sperm form. Unlike a woman's ovaries, the testes are outside of the body because in order to make sperm, they had to be kept at a specific temperature, usually about two degrees cool or Celsius than inside the body cavity. For that reason, the testes are kept in a pouch called scrotum that's in charge of keeping the testes at the perfect sperm-making temperature. After being produced in the testes, human sperm spend about three weeks coiled in tubes in the scrotum called the epididymis and that's where they mature and grow flagella, the little whip-like tails that sperms are so famous for, which makes them able to move around and swim. Now, the sperm stay here until they're ready to leave the body. So before we or they can go any further, we have to set the stage for that. As you know, in humans and some other animals, the penis usually sits around, not doing much except for little urine out of the bladder from time to time but ever so often, a male realizes that he's totally gonna get the chance to mate At this point, spongy tissue in the penis fills with blood and bam, erection. Some animals like raccoons, whales and walruses, actually have a literal bone in their penis to help the erection along but either way, the point is to allow the penis to enter the vagina, which scientists called coitus and deposit the sperm, he's put so much into making. These sperm travel in a special fluid, semen whose ingredients aren't combined until they're ready to be released by a series of muscular contractions that cause emission, more commonly known as ejaculation. At this point, the contraction has carried the mature sperm from the epididymis through two muscular ducts called the vas deferens, which carry them up from the testes, up and over the bladder and down past the seminal vesicles here. With contributions from the nearby prostate gland, they pick up a bunch of fluid that contains mucous and coagulating enzymes, ascorbic acid and sugars that the sperm are gonna need for their trip. Now, the semen is complete and it travels down the short ejaculatory ducts to the urethra to be released at the end of the penis where if the timing is right, one among the hundreds of millions of sperm in that emission can find and fertilize an egg. That my friends is how we all get our start. To find out or to remind yourself what happens after fertilization, you can always check out this video on embryonic development but fittingly enough, this wonderful beginning marks the end of our treatment of the animal kingdom. Please join us next week when we go deeper into the other kingdoms that we share this planet with, the bacteria, the archaea and the proteus.