SPERM MOVEMENT I'ROIU.KMS AND OBSERVATIONS 



17 



•h 



Fig. 1. Sagittal section of neck of bull spermatozoon. Fixation, 40% 

 Os0 4 in carbon tetrachloride, one hour. Araldite embedding (x 51, 000). 



HYDRODYNAMICS OF SPERM MOVEMENT 



Some of us have amused ourselves by calculating the amount of 

 energy a spermatozoon expends in swimming and relating the value 

 so obtained to the amount of free energy available from the break- 

 down of exogenous substrate or the hydrolysis of ATP. The two are 

 not the same, but the party line is to concentrate on ATP, the excess 

 free energy transferred during fructolysis being assumed to be use- 

 less, wasted, or used for some hypothetical maintenance. Weber, in 

 his first Dunham Lecture at Harvard (1958, p. 4), said, "Since all 

 the energy provided during the course of metabolism is finally trans- 

 ferred to ATP, . . . ". This statement is difficult to accept in the case 



