Animals That Can Switch Their Genders
Do you know its bot just hukans who experience homsexuality, there are animals who have the tendency to change their genders as well.
Sexual plasticity or transgender ness is found across the animal kingdom, from the Jungles of Burundi to the tropical waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. This can be found in a large geographical region. You might have heard a lot of terms like transgender man or a transgender woman. In these cases people are born with a particular gender but don't feel like living their life with it, the ones who can afford a surgery undergoes the medical procedure and get their gender changed, the others start to live like the gender they prefer without undergoing the surgery. These days, the process has turned out to be normal and you might have even seen these people doing good in life, for instances you might have heard about a transgender pilot, a transgender police officer and various others. However, talking about the patriarchy, some people still believe that this is against the norms of nature, but to prove them wrong, nature itself has its evidence as this phenomenon of being a transgender does not only apply to human beings but also to a wide species of animals. This phenomenon that is the ability to live as one sex, then switch to the other in animals, is known as sequential hermaphroditism. However, the phenomenon is still very rare. Scientists say that the animals undergo sex change due to various natural and environment causes such as temperature change, change in the surroundings, change in the number of male and female proportions and several others. More than 500 species of fishes are capable of changing their gender at least once in their life span. However, there are various such species in the animal kingdom which are found to change their genders, some of which are as follows: 1. Frogs Researchers have begun noticing an unusual trend among frogs living in polluted ponds. Great numbers of male frogs have been shown to reverse their sex. Studies show that a pesticide named atrazine is the cause of the gender swap. As the chemical gets into lakes and rivers, it suppresses the production of the male frog’s sex hormone, testosterone, while increasing Oestrogen, the female sex hormone, which automatically results in the change of sex in frogs. 2. Bearded Dragons These gender-reversing Australian reptiles change sex when they are still in their eggs.The determinant factor for their switch is the outside temperature, meaning that depending on how hot it is outside, a fertilised male egg could become female. To get an easier understanding, if a fertilised male egg is shifted from a cold place to a hotter location, it will automatically turn itself into a female. What’s even more surprising to the bearded dragon is that although the lizards which were technically born male but have later changed their gender to female lay twice the amount of eggs than a female which was originally born as a female. 3. Slugs Slugs look like a snail without its shell. These species possess both male and female reproductive organs at the same time and can give birth alone without having a need of any partner. What's even more surprising is that any two mature slugs can have sex and both of them can get pregnant at the same time. 4. Snakes While most female snakes need a mate to lay eggs, some species like the flowerpot snake are capable of reproducing all alone and giving birth to a young one. 5. Fish As we said earlier, the phenomenon of switching genders is most commonly found in fishes. We all know Nemo from the famous anime film “Finding Nemo”. The clownfish can switch from male to female when necessary. Clownfish live in groups where only two members are sexually mature, a large male and an even larger female. The rest are smaller, sexually immature males. If something happens to the female in the breeding pair, her male mate transforms into a female and selects the next biggest male in the group to become her new partner. Although this concept is a bit hard to believe, it's real at the same time. This forces us to believe that mother nature is way ahead of our understanding. What do you think about this? Do mention your thoughts in the comment section below.
