THE AMPULLA AND THE SEMINAL VESICLES
The vas deferens winds up over the bladder, the hollow, pouchlike organ where urine collects. Then the tube widens or flares out. The widened or flared-out portion of the tube is called the ampulla. The ampulla is a sort of ‘sperm storage tank’ or reservoir, where sperm are kept until they’re ejaculated.
The seminal vesicle-Just at the lower part of the ampulla, the seminal vesicles are connected to the vas. You have two seminal vesicles, but you can see only one in Illustration 18. Seminal refers to sperm, and ‘vesicle’ means ‘little sac’, so together the words mean ‘little sperm sac’. The seminal vesicles got their name because scientists once thought that sperm were stored there until they were ejaculated. We now know that sperm are stored in the ampulla, but the name hasn’t been changed.
Even though they don’t store sperm, the seminal vesicles have an important job. They make the white sticky fluid called semen, or seminal fluid, that spurts out of your penis when you ejaculate. Mixed in with this fluid are millions of sperm from your ampulla. But sperm are so tiny that they account for only about one-tenth of the teaspoon of milky fluid that comes out when you ejaculate. The other nine-tenths of your ejaculate is composed mostly of fluid from the seminal vesicles.
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