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Dear Alice,
Me and a guy were having a discussion in reference to puberty. A question came up in the discussion: are males born with their sperm? We went to the Sex Education Dept. of our school, and they weren't able to give us an answer, and recommended your site. So the question is, are males born with sperm, like females are born with all of their eggs?
Thanx, Don't Know!
Dear Don't Know!,
Yes, but technically, they're not sperm... yet. In the same way that women have a specific quantity of immature eggs at birth, baby boys are born with what appears to be a set number of undeveloped sperm cells. These precursors eventually become mature sperm after they reach puberty, which is similar to women producing mature eggs after they start menstruating.
For women, eggs that are prepped for ovulation are not replaced. In contrast, men's supply of sperm is continually replenished. Basically, immature sperm cells make exact copies of themselves. The originals are saved for future use, while the duplicates transform themselves into four mature sperm each.
Women's eggs typically stop maturing with the onset of menopause. On the other hand, men's sperm production, a process known as spermatogenesis, continues all throughout their adulthood. However, if all of a man's undeveloped sperm cells were to be damaged or killed, he would be sterile because his body no longer has the resources necessary to produce sperm.
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