Let’s wallow in semen a little while longer, shall we? We have already seen that, even in humans, there is more to this substance than meets the eye. It contains proteins that, when mixed together, can forge a mating plug. It also contains sugars as sperm fuel, proteins that protect the sperm cells from the acidic vaginal environment, zinc that keeps the sperm’s DNA in good shape, and chemical compounds that prevent the sperm cells from becoming overenthusiastic prematurely.

But this list of ingredients is just the tip of the iceberg. Human ejaculates are home to hundreds of different proteins (which in certain women cause a kind of “sperm hay fever,” an allergic reaction to semen). And those are not trace amounts either; most of them occur in considerable concentrations, so they must be doing something important — we just don’t know what. Even in the ejaculate of the lowly banana fly Drosophila melanogaster, researchers have identified no fewer than 133 different kinds of proteins. One hundred and thirty-three! And this excludes the many proteins that are in the sperm cells themselves. These 133 are all produced by the banana fly version of the prostate, which releases them into the liquid portion of the semen.