Human sperm roll like ‘playful otters` as they swim, study finds, contradicting centuries-old beliefs
(World News Science)

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN More than 340 years ago, a Dutchman named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek invented a powerful new compound microscope and accidentally discovered the existence of bacteria, a groundbreaking achievement that changed the course of medicine. Not long after, he decided to look at his ejaculate — definitely not an accident — and discovered tiny, wiggling creatures with tails he dubbed “animalcules.” These creatures “moved forward owing to the motion of their tails like that of a snake or an eel swimming in water,” van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the secretary of the UK Royal Society in 1678. The tail of a man’s sperm, he added “lashes with a...