IS it sexist to think like this? Or should we be giving more credit to the egg? Maybe eggs have strong bouncers on the door that only let the right sperm win.
Since skuzzy isn't locking this thread...
The female side of the selection process is supposed to have taken place before copulation occurs.
As for competitive, selfish, ruthless sperm... I think that's a bit of an anthropomorphization, but in general, yes, the animal kingdom works on the principle of one organism exploiting another. What makes the ecosystem hold up is that no one species becomes too dominant.
What confuses me about all of the evolutionary biologists who are looking for the "altruism gene," or something like that, is that altruism being considered a virtue is a modern phenomena. If you could talk to a man from the ancient world, and explain to him that a "good" man is self-sacrificing, he would think you were mad. Ancient civilization arose from the principle of the strong dominating the weak...whether it could have arose in a different way is irrelevant.
