Why is a low sperm count a problem?

[Frimley111R]

A friend has this due to cancer treatment when he was a child. I told another friend about it and it occurred to me that there are millions of sperms and so even if there were only 10% of the normal number this is still a lot of them! Surely they all swim up to the egg, one wins, the egg 'shuts the door' and the others all fk off and die, literally. So what's the problem with less of them?

[LordGrover]

Just guessing... it's simply a numbers game. Even with a 'normal' count of millions each time it's often not successful. Surely reducing the count lessens the chances of an already low-ish probability, no?

ETA vaguely relevant gif...

Edited by LordGrover on Friday 7th March 10:30

[Siscar]

Exactly, not so much that millions get there and one wins, more that millions start in the hope that one gets there. (Based on biology lessons a long time ago (not an expert)

[Engineer1]

With Sperm it is a numbers game, the more that are produced the better the chances that one will get to the egg, some sperm will be odd shaped, some will be slow, some will be old so the more there is the more good ones are in the game.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

When I programmes like Jeremy Kyle and the like, I find it absolutely staggering that out of 100m sperm, they were the quickest!!!!

[sleep envy]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

When I programmes like Jeremy Kyle and the like, I find it absolutely staggering that out of 100m sperm, they were the quickest!!!!

I sometimes find myself thinking this when reading posts on PH.