ASCAP Vol 9, p 7-8 (October, 1996)
Spermatogenesis or sperm retention? The problem of the undescended testis.
Comment on a new theory by Michael Chance
by
John Price
I had always thought that the testes were
externalised in order to lower the temperature, and that this in some way
facilitated spermatogenesis. One hoped
that this was really necessary, to make up for the inconvenience and occasional
excruciating pain to which the external testis is subject. But this is not the accepted answer. In the most recent review of the field,
Bedford (1) says, "Descent of the testis to an accommodating scrotal sac
is one of the more puzzling features of the reproductive tract of
mammals......the present conceptual framework in male reproductive physiology
may yet be inadequate to resolve these questions."
Now
Michael Chance has come up with an entirely new and amazingly bright idea. In a paper (2) in a recent issue of the Journal
of Zoology he proposes that the testes are externalised in order to
avoid sudden rises in intraperitoneal pressure. He points out that the mammalian male
reproductive tract is not guarded by a sphincter, and so, if the peritoneal
pressure rises, the seminal fluid would be expelled from an internalised
testis, epididymis and seminiferous tubules.
This idea came to him when he read in a newspaper that the urine of
Now,
it is known that many mammals do not have externalised testes. It is this fact which casts doubt on the
temperature theory of externalisation.
What is it which distinguishes those mammals who do from those who don't
have externalised testes? Here Michael
Chance is able to
Unfortunately the Journal of Zoology does not have a
correspondence column, otherwise one would wait with rising excitement the
response of Michael's zoological colleagues.
Already there has been some comment in New Scientist (August 21)
and on the BBC's World Service (August 23).
It is certainly a cause for excitement in ASCAP members that our first
President and long-time guru should set the zoological world aflame at the
venerable age of 81. There is no doubt
that his "systems forming faculty" is still fully operative.
An
additional reaction of my own is to be profoundly disappointed in
evolution. Mammals are very good at
providing sphincters where necessary.
The
How
easy to provide a sphincter! How hard to
send these little organs on a long journey through the abdominal cavity, out
through the abdominal wall, leaving it weak and subject to hernia, and in doing
so to expose them to all sorts of risks and injuries, even to the extent of
being bitten off by one's fellow chimpanzees.
There must, surely, be some reason why a seminiferous sphincter was not
a viable option during the evolutionary solution of this CPP problem.
A
similar argument applies to the Surbey explanation of anorexia nervosa
(3). If adolescent girls want to delay
reproduction for a few years until circumstances are more propitious for
childbirth, why can't they inhibit the release of gonadotropic hormone
releasing hormone from the hypothalamus, in the way that the humble marmoset
does, rather than evolve the convoluted, crude and clumsy pathway of getting
the girl to believe she is too fat when she weighs five stone just to keep her
weight below some threshold at which ovulation is inhibited? This is not the sort of behaviour we have
come to expect from evolution. We can
forgive the odd lapse, like having some of the photosensitive pigments on the
wrong side of the neuronal network of the retina, but this is clearly one of
those minor peaks on the epigenetic landscape, and to scale the highest peak
one would have had to go through the valley of altering the whole evolution of
the eye. But when a simple alternative
is available, like a seminiferous sphincter?
When and if we finally get to call our Maker to account, we should put
it to him that we are not at all happy that the race of men should have been
handicapped with external testes, just so that the Oxford and Cambridge crews
can cling on to that precious fluid they have been accumulating through the
long weeks of intensive training and self-denial.
But
seriously, Michael's theory will give rise to a lot of thinking about the
evolution of sphincters, and also to a reappraisal of the whole subject of
intra-abdominal hydrodynamics in relation to exercise.
References
1.
2.
Chance, M.R.A. (1996) Reason for the externalisation of the testis of
mammals. Journal of Zoology,
3.
Surbey, M.K.. (1987) Anorexia nervosa, amenorrhea and adaptation. Ethology and Sociobiology, 8,
47-62.