Study: Sperm do not swim as we thought - they move like otters

This should mean that the sperm swims in circles, but it has found an ingenious way to move forward.

- It is similar to how otters get along, says Hermes Gadelha, senior lecturer at the university and one of the researchers behind the study.  

But why does it look completely different through a microscope?

- People have a superstition about what they see. We believe that what we see is the absolute reality but it is only a limited picture, he says and continues:  

- To really see how sperm moves, you would need, if possible, a tiny camera on the sperm's head to see how the tail moves. To get just that perspective, we have used observations from the 3D microscope together with mathematics to produce something that is not even possible to see with a 3D microscope, says Hermes Gadelha. 

In the video, you can see how sperm move according to the study published in Science Advances.