Pollution leading to sex change in animals
By
MIZONEWS.NET | October 15, 2012
By Maneka Gandhi
http://www.mizonews.net/op-ed/pollution-leading-to-sex-change-in-animals/In school you learn that biological sex is a game of X and Y chromosomes. Women have two X's, and men have X and Y. Those with sexual abnormalities and whose sex cannot be classified as male or female are hermophrodite (the polite term is now intersexual ).
The word hermaphrodite is a combination of the names of the Greek gods Hermes (male) and Aphrodite (female).Humans are rigidly bound. For a man to become a woman and vice versa, it takes a series of very painful operations and the disapproval of society. But animals, god bless them, can have much more fun with their identities. In the wild, gender ambiguity is natural and practically anything goes. From protozoa to pill bugs to porgies, changing from one sex to another is a way of life. Some species will begin life as males and switch to females and others switch from female to male. Some will change sex in both directions, and others will be both sexes at the same time. Most species will only change once, but there are some species that change numerous times.
The hamlet, a tropical fish, can shift back and forth between the sexes in just 30 seconds. That speed comes in handy during the hamlet's marathon sex sessions; hamlets spawn an average of 14 times in one day. Sometimes, all it takes is an environmental factor to alter one's gender. Humans don't need survival strategies – we are now more than 7 billion – but every other species does.
