What is the life expectancy of a sperm after ejaculation?

One of the most widespread urban legends around the world of public swimming pools is, along with the fact that if you piss a diluted chemical product in the water it changes color and gives you away to others, that if you have an ejaculation in the water it is possible to leave pregnant some girl who splashes nearby. Don't worry: you can pee and ejaculate in a public pool without any of those worries (although of course it's better that you don't for everyone's sake).

And it is that semen, for those who do not want to get pregnant, is something like a substance contaminated by radioactivity. There are women who can't even tolerate it touching their skin: what if, by mistake, it ends up entering the vagina? What if there are jumping sperm?

To take away our fear about semen, well, it is worth knowing how long a sperm is capable of surviving when it leaves our body in the race of life (getting very euphemistic).

Sperm do not get along very well with vaginas

Ironically, sperm don't get along very well with vaginas. More than 99% of the sperm in the ejaculate die in the vagina before reaching the fallopian tubes, due to the acidic environment of the vagina. For this reason, a man who has less than 20 million sperm per ejaculate is considered infertile.

After entering the woman's body, sperm usually remain fertile between 48 and 72 hours, but only under ideal conditions, that is, during the days of ovulation, which is when the vaginal pH is above 6, which is the pH during the rest of the days (the degree of acidity of the ideal environment for a sperm is 7-7.5, and the temperature: between 37 ºC and 37.5 ºC.)

There are other factors that could influence the fate of the sperm. Work by British researchers Robin Baker and Mark A. Bellis, although not yet conclusive, suggests that orgasm offers women a way to control male sperm. If there is an orgasm, more sperm is attracted. If there isn't, it repels to some extent. If the orgasm occurs under the circumstances of infidelity, then the orgasm produces a greater number of contractions to attract a greater flow of sperm: why, if not, would there be the risk of maintaining an extramarital relationship? Something like the effect of plungers in drains. The cervix literally sucks.

If we ejaculate outside the vagina, the life expectancy of the sperm is very short. Depending on humidity and temperature, they can last only minutes. How long it takes for the seminal fluid to dry, which is where the sperm can survive.

By the way, spermatozoa were first distinguished in 1679 by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the first powerful microscopes.

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