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High school biology
Course: High school biology > Unit 8
Lesson 6: The reproductive systemWelcome to the reproductive system
Humans reproduce and bear offspring through the reproductive system, which includes pregnancy, fetal development, and birth. Males have testes that produce sperm and a penis for delivery. Females have ovaries that produce eggs, a uterus for baby development, and breasts for milk production. Hormones regulate these organs. Created by Vishal Punwani.
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- hi, a general question for the reproduction and pregnancy videos. are there quizzes in the making? im a student midwife and having been using the videos for a while on youtube, before i came across this fantastic site. my children love the math quizzes - id love to have some to help me with my study too! thanks(18 votes)
- Actually, they have! I have been practicing with them, too, for my A&P III class. They have two sets:
https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/organ-systems/mcat-reproductive-system/e/reproductive-system-questions
https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/organ-systems/mcat-reproductive-system/e/reproductive-questions-2(8 votes)
- I though that the babies developed in the womb, but he said they developed in the uterus! What is going on here?(0 votes)
- "Womb" and "uterus" mean the same thing. It's where the baby develops.(38 votes)
- why is the baby upside down(7 votes)
- the baby is usually NOT upside down but when it get ready to get out of the mother's body, it starts to rotate its body and turn upside down. so that it would be easier for them to get out of the body.(2 votes)
- What happens if somebody has both male and female hormones? What happens if there is an imbalance between the two types of hormones?(8 votes)
- This actually is a form of intersex, like the androgen insensitive syndrome ! http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/ais(2 votes)
- Does menstruation takes place only in humans or in all other mammals?(4 votes)
- All mammals have menses. Some are seasonal to insure offspring in spring when plants are also growing and expanding their range. So they have menses in spring to summer, but not in winter. (Even birds which lay eggs tend to be seasonal and lay in spring and summer. l) Primates tend to be monthly or more correctly, cyclical regardless of the time of year.(7 votes)
- 1. At what time in the gestation period can the fetus be regarded as a male or a female?
2. I have heard that the menstrual cycle first begins in a female when she was a fetus but it pauses after birth and resumes again in adolescence. Is it true?
THANK YOU!(2 votes)- 1. Sexual differentiation begins in the fetus, after 9 weeks of development. Prior to that it is called an embryo. Ultrasounds at 12-15 weeks can pick up on the development of male genitalia, therefore parents can be told the sex of the fetus if they want to know.
2. No, that is not true.(5 votes)
- How many times do you have to have sex to make a baby one time or more?(2 votes)
- After puberty, one time may be all that is required. A female can become pregnant the first time. The female has a cycle that determines when she is fertile or has a egg that is ready to be fertilized. There is no way for a woman to accurately guess when that egg is present unless tests for hormones are done. That is why people use.birth control or condoms, because pregnancy is a big decision and raising a child is a big responsibility. It may be better for you to talk to a trusted adult, parent, school nurse etc., because it is likely you will have additional questions. However, this series of videos has much information.(5 votes)
- At, Why would millions of sperm be produced per day, but only one egg per month. What is the real point of that? 1:50(1 vote)
- I just wanted to answer this question for anyone who might still be wondering the same thing, because there actually are reasons why this crazy ratio exists! First, it's important to remember that women ovulate one egg per month; many follicles may get activated but get reabsorbed when they don't mature (atresia) and a lot just die through the natural cell cycle. Despite females producing fewer gametes total than men, their gametes (eggs) are also more energetically expensive to produce; eggs are 10,000 times bigger than sperm (!) and are in fact the biggest cells in the human body by diameter! (Here's a Khan article that shows some comparisons: https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/cells/embryology/a/egg-meets-sperm). Another consideration with with the single egg release is that the female human body is only really equipped to "ideally" support one baby, in terms of space and resources (like Joanne said, thank goodness we rarely have litters!)
Sperm on the other hand, don't live very long outside the body so they need to be constantly produced. Two other factors are that not all sperm are produced with the "right" shape for them to move as quickly as possible, and that increasing sperm count also increases chances of the egg being fertilized. Hope that helps!(6 votes)
- what is the difference between gestation and Pregnancy(3 votes)
- Gestation is simply the time taken between the conception and parturition(birth) of the baby. But pregnancy is the period of events occurring from the fertilization to the time when the baby is ready to be ejected from the uterus(280 days/ 40 weeks approx).(1 vote)
- what would happen if a person had male and female organs? would that mean no baby? i feel wierd for asking.(1 vote)
- Whether a hermaphrodite(The more scientific term for someone with both reproductive organs) could get pregnant and carry the pregnancy and have a baby depends mostly whether they have a more complete set of reproductive organs. So if there is a fully functioning uterus and ovaries, then it's theoretically possible to get pregnant and have a baby.
However, most if not all true hermaphrodites have incomplete reproductive organs and a pregnancy would be extremely rare.(4 votes)
Video transcript
- Welcome to the reproductive system. So, let's start by asking, "What is the reproductive system?" It's basically a system in
our bodies that includes our sex organs and certain
parts of our brain. You can see the sex
organs here on the male, and here in two places on the female. So, this system within our
bodies allows us to reproduce, it allows us to make babies. And to make babies what
we're doing is combining genetic material from a
biological mother's egg and a biological father's
sperm to make our offspring. And we typically do this
by sexual intercourse. So, let's first take a
brief look at a couple of the most important sex
organs that make males and females have in their
reproductive systems. So, the males have the testes. And these are the most
important structures. Sort of the structures
that everything else is built around in a male. And that's because the testes produce his contribution to a baby. They make these small mobile cells that carry his genetic
material into a female to fuse with her genetic
material to cause a pregnancy. And these small mobile
cells are his sperm. Another important male organ is the penis. And the penis is used to deliver his sperm inside the female mate to increase the chance
that it meets her egg. So, those are really
the major male organs. Now on the female side, one of her major organs is the ovary and she has two just like
how males have two testes. And in fact the ovaries
and testes are homologous, they came from the same
precursor in development. Now the ovaries are responsible
for producing the female's genetic contribution to
a baby, that is the egg. The ovaries, though, are a
lot different to the testes, in that the testes are
constantly producing lots and lots of sperm. To the tune of of millions per day. Where as the ovaries only
release one egg per month. So, the next really important female organ is called the uterus. And the uterus is basically
a really thick muscular organ that's capable of stretching out and it's actually where the
baby's actually developing during pregnancy until birth. The next really important female
structures are the breasts. And the breasts are important
because they produce milk during the pregnancy and afterwords via a process called lactation. And lactation happens due
to a series of hormones that generally get
released around pregnancy. So, this breast milk that
gets produced can feed and nourish the growing baby and it actually plays a roll in creating a stronger immune system for the baby. So, we've seen some of
the major structures of both male and female
reproductive systems. But is that all the
reproductive systems are? Actually, no. Besides producing the sperm and egg, the reproductive systems produce chemicals whose signals have a
really strong influence over activities in our bodies. We call these chemicals, hormones and because they come from
our reproductive systems we refer to them as our sex hormones. For example, the male's major
sex hormone, testosterone, which is actually produced in the testes, is responsible for many masculine traits. Such as body hair, the
deepening of your voice, muscle growth, and there's
possibly even a link to levels of aggression in males. On the female side of things,
the ovary is the primary producer of some major female hormones, like estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen and progesterone play
a major roll in the timing of egg release from the ovaries. Estrogen is also responsible
for the development of a lot of feminine traits. For example, breast development. So, there's the making
of the sperm and the egg, there's the production of
the major sex hormones. What else does the reproductive system do? Well it does one more
really important thing. And that's coordinate the
meeting of the sperm and the egg. And it does that by the males
penis and the females vagina. These two organs are used to ensure that the sperm and the
egg meet each other. So, the penis actually deposits
sperm within the vagina, so that sperm has a
better chance of reaching and fertilizing the egg released inside her reproductive tract. So, you might be thinking,
"Does the reproductive system "do all this stuff on it's own?" I mean what tells it what to do? And that's a good question. The reproductive system is
actually controlled by the brain. There's an area in the brain
called the hypothalamus that sits just about there
on the inside of the brain, just about in the middle. And the hypothalamus
actually releases a hormone called gonadotropin
releasing hormone or GNRH. GNRH effects another
part of the brain called, anteriorpituitary which
sits right about there just under the hypothalamus. And anteriorpituitary in
response to GNRH releases two hormones lutenizing hormone or LH and follicle stimulating hormone or FSH. And its the lutenizing hormone and the follicle stimulating hormone that primarily effect the
male and female sex organs. So, the male's testes
and the female's ovaries to control their functions. Finally, a word on pregnancy, as pregnancy is a huge
part of reproduction and certainly the most long lasting part. So, pregnancy results
when a sperm successfully fertilizes an egg to create a zygote. A zygote is a first cell in a new organism that has genetic material
from both mom and dad. And that genetic material
has come from the sperm and the egg that have fused. The zygote goes through
a series of developments and eventually implants
itself within the inner wall of a woman's uterus to grow. So, that's in here, remember that thick muscular
organ we talked about? The third step is what we'll
really broadly call gestation. Gestation is basically the development of the fetus into a baby. So, the development of all
the fetus's organ systems including their brains,
spinal cord, lungs, cardiovascular system,
their reproductive system, all the systems in their body. Gestation readies the
developing infant to be born. And it takes about nine months. When the babies ready to
come out of the uterus and into the world a number of hormonal changes take place in the mother's body. This signals her to start
getting ready to push the baby out of her body, in other words, give birth to the baby. She then goes through
a process called labor, also known as parturition,
to give birth to the baby. After the baby's born, the last step is to
give him or her a name.