9:30pm Tuesday, August 11 on TV One
It’s the most extreme race on earth – a contest with 250 million competitors; only one winner; and relentless obstacles thrown in for good measure. Real Life: The Great Sperm Race shows the story of human conception as it’s never been seen before (tonight at 9.30pm on TV ONE).
Using helicopter-mounted cameras, world-renowned scientists, CGI and dramatic reconstruction, The Great Sperm Race brings to life the extraordinary journey of sperm, from ejaculation to egg – scaled up to human size, with the sperm played by real people. Taking place in some of the world’s most striking landscapes to illustrate the stages of the process, it follows the extraordinary twists and turns of the journey from conception to fertilisation as the microscopic world of sperm and egg is scaled up accurately by 34,000 times.
Shoulder to shoulder with the sperm, viewers see the human-sized heroes negotiate some hostile terrain, including the Canadian Rockies, representing the epic proportions of the vagina; and the buildings on London’s South Bank symbolising the intricacies of the cervix.
“It’s a surprise that it works as elegantly as it does most of the time, because the battle that sperm have in order to find and fertilise an egg is just immense,” explains scientist Allan Pacey. “Everything is working against sperm and they’re not really given a helping hand by the female reproductive tract. It is just a monumental battle of quite epic proportions.”
With the female body designed to repel and destroy invaders, The Great Sperm Race demonstrates how the road to conception is no walk in the park. From acidic vaginal walls to impassable cervical crypts, the sperm face unremitting obstacles. Huge swathes perish along the way as the safety of the fallopian tubes awaits just a few dozen, but only one will reach the ultimate goal – fertilisation of the egg and the beginnings of new life.
Made in conjunction with medical research charity Wellcome Trust, and consulting the world’s leading reproductive scientists, Real Life: The Great Sperm Race demonstrates the extraordinary intricacies of human bodies and the giant lottery of luck that is the reproductive process.
Plus, some amazing facts are revealed along the way including: the epididymis, a tiny lump in the testicle, can hold hundreds of millions of sperm; an ejaculated sperm covers the human equivalent of 15 miles in under two seconds; deadly acid in the vagina can kill up to 99 per cent of sperm in just 30 minutes; a perfectly fertile, healthy couple has just a one in five chance of conceiving every month; and the better the sex, the more chances of conception.
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