bunjywunjy:

you-better-rvn:

bunjywunjy:

fish do, more often than you think!

many fish are capable of sex changes, though whether it’s male-to-female, female-to-male or bidirectional depends on the species.

these sex changes come in two major flavors though- changes that are induced by external factors, or changes that happen naturally at a set point in an animal’s lifecycle.

in the first group, for example, we have the clownfish! 

clownfish live in family groups with one large female and multiple smaller attendant males. but if the female dies, one of the males will step in, bulk up, and transition from male to female! (so basically, Finding Nemo should have gone WAY differently)

CLOWNFISH learned TRANS YOUR GENDER

and in the other camp, we can look at the sheepshead wrasse- a large ocean fish where dominant males duel each other to control access to a large population of breeding females!

except that when a female sheepshead wrasse reaches a certain age, she goes through some major life changes- by growing a fuCKING ENORMOUS CHIN and transitioning from female to male!

SHEEPSHEAD WRASSE learned TRANS YOUR GENDER

and really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg! animals are basically doing weird sex bullshit every single second of every single day, these are just the easiest examples I could come up with. 

What’s the hardest example you could come up with?

platypuses have ten sex-determining chromosomes.