By Kendra Holliday
Before Sex at Dawn, there was Sperm Wars.
I’m reading this fascinating book about sperm by an evolutionary biologist named Robin Baker.
Baker was interviewed on several radio stations when the book came out, and he was instructed to not use the word sperm in his interviews. More than once the interview had to be cut short and music played to fill in the gap. I mean come ON, that’s like discussing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and not being able to mention the word chocolate!
According to Baker:
– Men can change the content of their semen as quickly as they can deduce whether they will ejaculate inside a woman or finish themselves off by masturbating. They can unconsciously control the amount of egg-getting sperm, fighter sperm, or guard sperm, to name a few.
– Men can also adjust the number of sperm in their ejaculate based on when they last had sex with their partner. If they have
n’t had sex in a week, they’ll have around 500 million sperm in their semen. If they haven’t had sex in three days, they’ll have 300 million; three hours, 30 million.
The aim is to “top off” their partner and ensure she has a certain amount of semen in reserve inside her in case another man’s sperm is introduced. Then he’ll have a microscopic army inside her ready to fight a sperm war.
– Men masturbate in secret so that those around them won’t know how aggressively fertile they are. Masturbating doesn’t waste sperm per se, it actually enables the man to reload with fresher, younger, healthier sperm.
– One of the most common things a woman looks for on a man to know if he might be a good person to breed with is his ass. “The best indication of a man’s health and hormones is the ratio between his waist and buttocks. Ideally, they should both measure nearly the same.”
– We have oral sex as a way of testing our partner for health and infidelity. You gotta get in close with your nose in order to get a gauge on the state of the genitals.
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This book makes me so glad my partner has had a vasectomy!