 Trust it! Hey everybody, Dr. Rowe here. Let's go ahead and actually introduce the male and female reproductive systems here so I have the same picture of Oliver. When I look at this picture, obviously I think he's a miracle, and I think there's about four main miracles a year in the United States alone as far as the fact that we can produce and females can grow and have offspring. Like Oliver is pretty amazing, but I like to think about the fact that for about 30 minutes he was a single cell, right? He was, as I go, a fertilized egg. So we'll look at the primary function of our reproductive systems is to produce these sex cells, these gametes, so that we can propagate our species. So we're going to talk about all the other things that these systems do as well, but that's the primary function. If a male and female both have a healthy reproductive system, then they can produce offspring. They can produce male gametes, which would be your sperm. Female gametes will be your eggs or your oocytes. But yeah, so that single celled organism, Oliver, grew into two and then four and then eight, and then he was, we don't know exactly how many cells a baby is when they're born. I've seen numbers like 15 trillion. That's probably too high, though, but it's in the trillions. So we went from being a single cell to trillions of cells that have all have specialized functions by the time he was actually born. So we're not going to cover pregnancy. We'll talk a little bit about where fertilization occurs, but we won't talk about the fertilization process or pregnancy. That's going to be a whole separate unit that I cover in the future. Okay, so here we see some pictures of the male and female reproductive systems. They have some similarities, but they have some glaring differences. Let's start with the male because it's pretty simple. The male reproductive system is all about producing male sex hormones, your androgens, like testosterone, and then producing the male gametes, sperm. So the male reproductive system is designed to produce sperm as quickly as possible and be able to deliver it to a female to produce offspring. Female has to do the same thing. So the female has gonads, that would be the ovaries. The female has gametes, that would be the oocyte, the eggs. But there's going to be a lot less of them and they're only going to be releasing about one a month because if that egg is fertilized, then the rest of the system takes over, which is not only just to produce gametes and deliver gametes, but to nourish and care for the offspring for the nine months that it's in the uterus to deliver the offspring. And then also to feed the offspring with breast milk. So now you could talk about a lot of interesting things here, but it's interesting how our behavior is somewhat controlled by this. If you look at other species in biology, they call it sexual selection. Males are generally more concerned with quantity when it comes to mating. Females are more concerned with quality, which it makes sense because a male of any species like ours can produce offspring at any given moment. So every chance to reproduce could lead to offspring. Females are much more selective because they only get one shot per month and then if that egg is fertilized, then for humans it's nine months and then a couple years potentially of breastfeeding and then years of caring for the offspring. So females need to be a lot more selective. So that's this idea of sexual selection is pretty interesting. So the sexual pursuit area is generally larger in a man's brain because they can always be reproducing. Females look for quality, which is why in most biological species you see that the males are the ones that are more colorful and have plumage and these kind of things because they're trying to prove that they're fit enough to reproduce with. So it's just kind of interesting stuff. So we'll go through it, we'll cover all the details of the parts here, like what does the uterine or fallopian tube do, what's the epididymist do later, but for now to understand this one key thing. Males think produce male sex hormones, the androgens and produce gametes constantly and deliver gametes as needed. Females, same things, female sex hormones, your astrogens and progesterones produce the functional gametes, the oocytes, deliver the gametes, same thing. But then also you have the womb, so caring and nurturing for that offspring while it's developing in the womb and then we have the breast producing breast milk to feed that offspring. The World Health Organization still recommends breastfeeding for 27 months. So biologically, milk production is a very, very big deal. If a woman couldn't produce breast milk in the past, there would have been wet nurses or someone else in the village would do it. So kind of interesting. The last important thing here with females and what makes the female system so much more complicated is timing matters a tremendous amount too. We'll look at what's called the ovarian cycle, which is how we deliver, how the ovaries deliver an oocyte and egg so they can be fertilized. We'll also talk about the menstrual cycle, which is the uterus preparing for that egg. You can have the world's perfect egg, but when it reaches the uterus, if the uterus isn't ready for it, their pregnancy will not occur. You could have the perfect womb ready for an egg, but if the egg doesn't come or there's something wrong with the egg, then nothing's going to happen. So timing is super, super important in the female system. In the male system, it's just make 300 or 400 million sperm a day, make that many more tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera. With females, timing very, very important. So we'll dive into all these details. I just wanted to introduce it here. So this is the male and female reproductive systems. And let's go ahead and dive in. Hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.