Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Why Don't More Animals Change Their Sex?
Zoe Brain
That's the title of an article from Yale University:
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-dont-more-animals-change-their-sex.html So, why is sex change so rare? And, why does one species of fish reproduce strictly as separate sexes, while another very closely related species flexibly changes sex?
The capability is there, buried in our genes. Well, buried in my genes, anyway. It appears that my body attempted to do this, but of course the change was very incomplete. Rather from being from a fully functional male to fully functional female, it was from somewhat dysfunctional and infertile pseudo-male to a functional but sterile pseudo-female. I'm speaking biologically here, not psychologically. My mind has always been female, but that's an irrelevancy. So I could be considered a transitional variety, not 100% successful as either sex (biologically speaking), yet functional enough, barely, just, not merely to survive but to reproduce. That's good enough for Evolution, a C- is as good as an A+ here. My work has also helped save tens of thousands of lives, so even if I didn't have children, having someone with my talents being thrown up occasionally would be good for the species as a whole. Objectively, I'm an asset to humanity, no matter how many Torr the situation would suck on a personal level.
