Why do some species change sex?
In high school biology, we’re taught that biological sex is a game of X and Y. Women have two X’s, and men have one of each, X and Y. In recent decades, though, scientists have learned that things might not be so clear-cut. There are people whose biological sex can’t be easily determined because they’re born with both genitals or because the female presents with an XY and the male presents with the XX. People with congenital abnormalities that leave them unable to be classified as male or female are considered intersexual, a term which has come to replace the word “hermaphrodite” in humans. In the plant and animal world, though, hermaphrodites aren’t the atypical abnormalities they are in the human world. These species are evidence that there’s more to biological sex than just genes and chr
