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Comment by because_789 | Hacker News Reader

> About one-fifth of mammalian (including human) sperm are typically abnormal, containing no heads, two heads, two or more tails, oddly misshapen or malfunctioning tails, and so forth.

TIL

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You can get a microscope on Amazon for a few hundred bucks that lets you see this, red blood cells, and the critters that live in the water behind your house. Fun way to spend a weekend!

any specific recommendations that one could hook up to something to record the images/video?

Technically you can record with your phone through the eye piece.

It's no fun

there are some microscopes which are selling with a separate camera. microscope and camera spend you at least 6000$, then you can capture pictures on computer.

It's not as good as the devices built to take pictures or videos through microscopes (or microscopes that use them built in). It is a cheap and easy way that I've had success with.

Aliexpress /temu/ebay etc sell cheap eyepiece phone holders - not perfect, but makes my ex-schools microscope so much easier for my kids to use as we can a see the screen together.

I have an AMscope (without the ability to take images/video). I purchased it in 2014 so no promises on the brand today:

https://amscope.com/products/b120c-e3?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkeSsBhDU...

From my research into microscopes for fine electronics work, the keyword you are looking for is “trinocular”. They have standard camera mounts built in and you can attach almost any camera via an adapter.

https://www.youtube.com/@micro_safari has some recommendations (disclaimer: they do run a small shop, but he seems knowledgeable)

When we were dealing with fertility issues I started doing (somewhat) legit sperm counts at home. I was sick of paying hundreds of dollars each time.

I’m sure it wasn’t super accurate but it was accurate enough to know if things were improving on certain medications or not.

For myself, it was something like 94% misshapen. The fertility doc told me not to worry.

Indeed it was not an impediment.

Isn’t the purpose whole “sperm race to the egg” thing to QA the sperm? Slow or immobile sperm is a proxy for manufacturing defects (which could affect the genetic material within, I suppose).

Wait until you realize almost four-fifths are dead, immotile or slow moving. Only around 5% are actually viable.

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