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The most powerful sperm survive up to five days, but the average survival is 48 to 72 hours after ejaculation. This survival means that it is possible for a girl to get pregnant even outside the fertile period (however rare this is). If she has sex two or three days before ovulation, fertilization can happen.
“The sperm that survive the longest are the ones that carry X chromosomes – if they fertilize an egg, they give rise to a girl. They are slower and energy saving. On the other hand, Y sperm – which give rise to boys – are faster, use a lot of energy and live less”, says Carolina Carvalho, a gynecologist at Unifesp.
The life of spermatozoa is not easy: in 48 hours, they witness the death of millions of colleagues – of the approximately 300 million spermatozoa expelled with each ejaculation, only 500 reach the fallopian tubes, the channels that connect the uterus to the ovaries and where it happens the union of the sperm and the egg. To make matters worse, they face along the way the mucus expelled by the vagina, which has a texture that makes it difficult to move.
In the fertile period of women, the situation improves a little: the mucus becomes less thick, facilitating the «swimming» of sperm. Do you know how the ′′ pets ′′ survive during that time? Simple: they feed on fructose, sugar that is expelled in semen (the same type present in fruits).
When sperm die, they pass from the fallopian tubes to the abdominal cavity, where all the organs in the belly region are housed. There they are absorbed by the woman’s body and fall into the bloodstream. This process, of course, does not harm the woman at all.