Animal Sexual Fluidity

nous and just projected onto other organisms out there. So when we talk about gender bending, so to speak, in the animal world, what are we talking about. We're not just talking about sharing parental duties. So I'm talking about the sea horse. It's not enough to carry up to fifteen hundred eggs in your marine animal version of a baby Bjorn to be considered someone who is gender switching. So we are going to talk specifically about animals that

change their sex and why they do it. And while we're talking about this, why not talking about the sex change chicken? Oh yes, you're talking about Gertie the hen who later became Bertie B. E R T. I e Bertie instead of Gertie. H. This was the rooster. Yes two. This is in two thousand eleven where you had a pair of British chicken farmers and they observed a spontaneous

gender change in their previously egg laying hen Gertie. So she began to walk around like a rooster, put on weight, developed wattles under her chin, and she also grew dark brown plumage and a scarlet cockscomb on top of her head. Yeah, and she began to crow. Um. The British couple said that at first the crow was terrible, but with practice

is she actually sounded like a rooster. And according to Remy Molina, writing for Live Science, um, what happens with birds is that you have to sex organs present during the embryonic stages, but once a chicken's female jeans kick in, it typically develops only the left ovary. The right go nad, which is yet to be defined as an ovary or testies or both. It's called the OVI testis remains dormant.

So the idea here is that something like an ovarian cyste tumor, or maybe even a diseased adrenal gland caused the ovary to shut down and Gertie and then the dormant ov testis kicked in and produced androgens, which are hormones that are associated with male characteristics, which would have led to Gurtie's but then Bertie's physical and behavioral changes. And this is more of an example of a loophole

in sexual dimorphism. Um. But we're really going to talk more about organisms that are intentionally switching this up as a survival tactic or even a response to environmental conditions, situations where sex switching, yeah, is about the long game of survival. Now, there are a couple of types of

sex switching um. The first is simultaneous hermaphrodites, and they have both female and male reproductive parts for their entire life, and they can mate with any other member of their species they should find we're talking about more like fish and gastropods slugs to call back to our our slug sex episode. Yes, that make up the bulk of this type. And then you have a sequential hermaphrodites. And sequential hemaphrodites are born as one sex but change completely into the

other sex during the course of their lives. So this is definitely the more engaging for humanized example of sex changing because it's one where an animalist is actually transitioning from one gender into another and sometimes back again. So the question is why doesn't it occur more especially if you consider that this kind of strategy would double your chances for a Saturday night, so to speak, because you'd have, you know, from these strategies a large number of offspring.

So Suzanne Alonso, Assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, says, quote, an intuitive yet rarely studied explanation is that the considerable time or energy it takes

to change sex make hermaphroditeism unfeasible for most animals. That was the idea that she went into when she and her team created this theoretical model of hermaphrodite and separate sex life histories and in their their game that are rather the model sex change players I put players in quotes vary the age of their sex change, while the separate sex strategy responds by altering the number of male

and female offspring it produced. And they found that a hermaphrodite could spend thirty percent of its lifetime in the process of changing sex and yet still persistent a population. And so would that suggests is that UM only huge changes or cost rather UM can disfavor sex change SOT is not really enough to be of concern to limit that species lifespan. They can still exist while doing this. If it were more up to a fifty of their time, so many percent of their their time and energy changing

into another sex, then it might become an issue. And so Alonso and the researchers say that just taken a loan, that this cannot be the only reason why it's rare in nature. And maybe it's more about the environmental conditions which are generally more balanced, so you don't have to worry so much about there being too many females are too many males, Okay, So it's when the environment is

out of balance that's when something has to change. Yeah, And she also said for some species, parental duties might affect this as well, so it might be more advantageous just to have a separate sex system in place. Okay. Alright, so this leads us to the area of gender performance. Now, this is an obviously a situation where a male is not changing into a female, female is not changing into a male, but sometimes there is an advantage in pretending

that you are a member of the opposite gender. One wonderful example of this, UH is the occurs with cuttlefish. So you have to you have a two tiered system of males with cuttlefish. You have a big brash brawlers and then you have smaller, stealthy lotharios. And the footage of of these encounters between the males, particularly in the larger cuttlefish species, not the cute, small ones, the little iridescent ones that you see um at so many aquariums

that I'm talking about, the big cthulu esq ones. They get into these big carrying fights with each other, like ripping tentacles apart, just really brawling all over the rights to the female cuttle fish that are that are sort of waiting in the wings there. So on the surface of things, this might seem like it would just really favor the big, brash brawlers while the stealthy gal gutarios would be on the outskirts, right, what are the how

are they going to get in there? Well, so what they do is they use uh the cuttlefish powers of shape changing and color changing, particularly by use of their chromatophores, uh, to look like a female to sort of draw in, uh, change their color a bit, and then they can move in. They move in closer to the female. And then the big the big brawler guy that's over here hanging out, he looks over and he's like, oh, that's just another

female getting close to the female that I want. Maybe all made with both of them, So I'm not gonna do anything, right, But meanwhile that the little guy is getting closer and closer so that he can breed and often does successfully breed with the female cuttlefish. And so just clever is this disguise and so so perfect the

use of their chromatophores. Two thousand twelve study out of McQuire University in Sydney, Australia found that males can actually split themselves down the middle, appearing to be a male on one side of their body and a female on the other. So he's floating here between the big brawler and the female and the big brawler it looks like a lady cuttlefish just floating there harmless. But on the other side he's flirting and uh and and gaming to mate with the female. I like that. It's kind of

like having your own split billboard. Yeah, indeed, all right, Now, the female market squid does a similar thing. What she does is she flashes a pair of fake testies. And this is really interesting because the life of a female market squid is not an easy one. You have hundreds of thousands of market squids gathering to reproduce with really

aggressive behavior from the males, which often causes injuries. And female squids they will lay tubes of their eggs on the seafloor and that's all good and well, except that a lot of times above them will be a big ball of um, sort of breeding ball in the ocean going on, and so it's really easy for them to kind of get sucked back into that breeding ball. And again it's very violent. It takes up a lot of their energy and their resources. And they have just laid

these tubes of eggs on the floor. So what do they do to try to counteract this, Well, they use a little subterfuge. They control the appearance of this white stripe down the part of their body that mimics the approximate size, color, and position of testies on a male squid. So the male sees this and thanks, oh, not female leave alone. She gets off scott free. And according to Daniel Dumar teeny, one of the co authors of us study on female market fish, So we've seen the chromatov force, right,

the chromatov force. Um, this those sort of specialized pigment cells and the ability to change coloring, right, but we have never seen before, uh, the ability to turn white on and off. And this is due to a specialized type of cell called ol lucaphour. So she's essentially it's like when the taxi sign goes in service out of service, we m with, you know, just testies as the stumble. I suppose all right, well that that brings us to the world of garter snakes. Now I want to everyone

to imagine themselves in Manitoba, Canada for a minute. Alright, the snow has melted, spring is setting in, and that's when it pens of thousands of red sided garter snakes emerge from their limestone dens and begin to engage in great tangled mating rituals. We're talking Roman orgies of serpentine sex performed right out in the open, right there on the limestone. Yeah, and just big, big yeah, caligula, balls of snakes going at it right there in front of

God and everybody. Afterwards, after all of a sudden done, now they end up sliding off into the local marshes for the summer, carry about their life, and then they return to their dens in early fall. Now, generally speaking, in each of these big clustered balls of snakes, there's a female at the center because the males are competing for the mating rights there, and that's all that. That's what's going on in this big tangle. But in some cases the males actually mimic females to wind up at

the center of the heap slide. Yeah. Now you might wonder why why would a male snake do that? Well, I think think again about the fact that they're they're doing this. They're having this big snake orgy out in the open. So birds of prey are well aware that this occurs, because this isn't all you can eat snake buffet. Just just come down to you know, talents and beaks,

blazeon and just eat as much as you want. So there is a survival advantage in being at the center of that heap, because you're gonna be far harder to get to there's far less possibility that these birds of prey are going to feed on you. So maybe this male snake, he doesn't have an actual shot at reproductive success in in a tangle, but he pretends to be a female, he can at least get a survival advantage and and and get to snake off into the marshes.

So all plots in nature lead back to boozing buddies. So you're saying, yeah, okay, so we're talking about females imitating males imitating females. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this was in one of Shakespeare's Traumatis, but I don't remember which one. I'm sure. I'm sure that Shakespeare looked at the African bat bug, which is a small, reddish brown parasite that feeds off bat blood. Take that bats, and uh probably penned a couple of stories based on the um. These

bat bugs practice something called traumatic insemination. We've talked about this before. It's when males stab females in the abdomen with needle like penises and the inject spurned directly into the bloodstream. And uh, yeah right, it's it's pretty it's pretty violent. It's hard on the females, and it's also hard on other males because sometimes males do it to other males and so this may be more of a combat thing. So to protect themselves, the female bat bug

developed something called para genitals. We're talking about a funnel like genital opening on their body that tricks the male bat bug into sticking that, you know, the needle like penis into this area that is filled with immune cells. So it's it's really a smart strategy by the female batbugs because what it does is it reduces the site of injury to this one location and it's guiding the pro straight and straight into a bucket of immune cells,

and that helps to reduce the impact of injury. Now, male bat bugs took notice of this, and this is where the males who are imitating females comes in and created a similar paragenital to redirect attacks on their bodies. Except that the para genitals made them look more like females, so right, oops. So they adopted a differently shaped funnel which is more open and exposed, and that greatly reduced

to texts. So now you have females noticing that the males have done this and made this adaptation, and they also adopt the differently shaped funnel and clause. Rerhinehart of the University of Sheffled UK, who led us study on this um says that both of these female and male bat bugs who made these for their adoptions adaptations, uh, they suffered fewer mating scars than those with standard closed forms. So we see just this arms race between the genders

in these African bat bugs. Right, So then the question becomes, so cool, do they just keep creating these these uh iterations of para genitalia until they become ridiculous looking? Yeah, until it becomes I mean, I guess there has to be a point where the like the wave kind of breaks and falls back, right, because at some point, um it would it would not be sustainable. So there'd be like a level of complexity that it couldn't go beyond. Right, So yeah, that brings up the question about what form

will they ultimately take? Now, another wonderful example of this time of pseudo gender is the female spotted heighteninga. And this is this is pretty remarkable because female spotted hyenas are the socially dominant, larger and more aggressive of their species, and they have a pseudo penis. Now, to be clear, what they have here is an enlarged delatorus that can actually achieve a seven insurrection, as well as a structure that looks like a scrotum, a pseudoscurotum that's formed from

the labbya and uh. This makes them the only female mammalian species devoid of an external vaginal opening. And that's why we used to we used to think that that they might be hemaphrodites, that they're these were either hemaphrodite individuals in the species or or that the species itself featured hemaphrodites um. Now, on a there are a lot of mysteries that remain about like what purpose this actually

serves for the for the spotted hyenas. But on a biological basis, it's all due to higher levels of the hormone androgen in the females, particularly the pack dominant females, So it gives them their greater sizes, the greater strength, but it also makes reproduction difficult. So this uh, they're basically three areas where where where the where we see the wages of this first of all creates an awkward mounting situation for males and females, but sure that clariss

is getting in the way. Yeah. In fact, it's the point they say that the males like really have to learn how to do it. Like there are some species they just you know, take to it like a horse to water. But with the spotted hyena, the male is going to have to get in a little practice before we can actually connect um. Also, there's a there's some difficult plumbing here when it comes to to the birth of the pups because they have to give birth through

this pseudo penis. So on one level, you're talking about a narrow birth canal. It's an inch in diameter and the tissue often caress a two pound pup squeezes through, and that rip can actually prove fatal, So that means there's a higher mortality rate for a first time spotted hyena mothers. Additionally, the umbilical cord is a bit on the short side compared to the length of the birth tube, so the cord often breaks before the cub and merges, and this can this can lead to uh to death

for the for the young cub. In fact, of hyena cubs die of suffocation inside the pseudo penis. So another example of this that we we've had on this show many times, I feel like I need to say and come out to the stage again once again and join us.

Brazilian cave insects um because in the May two thou and fourteen edition of Current Biology Yoshizawa Casauro at All, they documented their findings from when they dissected four species of cave dwelling winged insects from Brazil called Neo Trogola, and they realized when they dissected them that the females had an internal penis like structure that they likely only extended during mating, and the males had a pouch like vagina, and so, okay, what are the mechanisms of this well mating,

the female spiny penis gets tightly anchored to the males male vaginas sperm duct, allowing the female to receive the semens. So, in other words, the penis function is more like a straw than a spout, and if the male tries to break away, the abdomen would well rip open and he would lose his genitals there um. The female insects also mate with multiple males, and they can store two batches

of sperm in the body, all right. What they think, the researchers think is that it could be the environmental conditions that have created this sort of penis like structure

in the female cave insects. That's because there is a lot of competition among males for fertile females, and in the cave environment, food is scarce, and so it turns out the female sperm is seen as a nuptial gift because not only um can the female cave sy fighter transfer this to her eggs, but before she does so, she can actually eat some of it and it has

nutritional value. So you see here that that's why the female is taking the role here as the aggressor in the reproductive relationship and essentially scooping out that sperm with this penis like structure. All right. That brings us to the area of gender change outright, ginger change. And we see this particularly in three different fish species, which serves as wonderful examples, the first of which is the anonymy fish a k a. The clown fish, and if you're

a parent a k a. The nemo fish. Um. These are some of the most prominent examples of sequential hermaphrodites. UH they live in a mutualistic relationship with a single an enemy for most of their lives. Since this, of course the uh you know, the small aquatic organism with the with the stinging tendrils, right, but the the anemone fish are have an immunity to that sting. So it's wonderful safe place to live. But they're also kind of

isolationalist here. Okay, So in this anonymy neighborhood, you have a sole female UH and the and the largest male, and those are the ones doing all the mating. But when the female dies, the largest fish in the ananymy neighborhood becomes a female, and then she begins mating with the next male. So you have a huge advantage to reproduction. In this UH. You get additional genetic diversity because every

fish in the immediate environment is a potential mate. But it's also particularly good since again as we're talking about a secluded little neighborhood, a secluded environment, they don't stray from far from home. So if you need that that diversity, if you need a new female, you just make one from the population. Another example of this is the parrot fish,

which is common around around tropical reefs. Throughout the world, and one of the adaptations that makes them unique and really interesting is that they have pharyngeel teeth which you can use to grind up corals, or they used to grind up corals. Another thing is that at night they surround themselves in this mucus like cocoon to protect them while they sleep in The idea is that the cocoon could mask their scent in making them harder for nocturnal

predators like more eels to find. But of course the super interesting thing about them um is that they can change sex in response to fluctuations in population density. So they have two strategies when it comes to this. In the first strategy, they're all born female and then later they can change sex into males and they can also begin life as males. Second strategy known as primary males, and it's thought again that this sex change is in response to low population density in in one or the

other of the genders. So in parrot fish populations, the large superman males these are large males that were once female, are dominant and they claim most of the females and the primary males often spawning groups with one female, So starting out as a female and then changing sex later

would be really advantageous. Females don't have any trouble finding mates no matter how large they are, while the males are much more reproductively successful as larger individuals, so they can reproduce as females when they're younger, and then when they grow to a large enough size to compete as males,

they change sex and reproduce as super males. And they see a similar situation with hawk fish now hawk fisher another tropical corald dwelling fish um and in the while, they have been been observed to participate in what we call bidirectional sex change. Uh so they're going from female to male but then also back again. So it's a similar situation with the parrot fish. You know, functional females changing into males. If a don and it's super mail dies,

but they can change back. Ah. So they are multidirectional when it comes to that. Yeah, multidirectional. You can think of it in terms of, you know, they there's a there's an opening on the staff, this individual can transition into that road for into that role for a little bit, but then when they're no longer needed there back into

their previous role. And this kind of this reminds me of that whole concept of survival as a whole, as a species, right, because it's not just about the individual fish here, it's looking at the whole population and responding accordingly and making sure that yes, we can respond to that and change and and um you know, offspring and it's corresponding genetic packages can be furthered into the future. Yeah,

it's like we need a mail to survive. We need a female to survive who's going to step up and change and then you you have you have a fish that comes up and does the job, and then the genetic lineage can continue. Now, we wanted to leave off this episode with this really cool butter fly that was discovered at the Natural History Museum of London in two

thousand and eleven. It's a Mormon butterfly. It hatched and the staff noticed today that the coloring looks a bit off on this and uh, they looked closer and they discovered that it was almost black on its male side, all black, and on the female side it was paler and flecked with blue red and tortoiseshell. And of course at first they didn't realize that this was half female, half male butterfly, because really you only see that in circus shows, right, Yeah, I mean there's sex organs were

essentially welded together. You would think this is like a Fiji mermaid kind of a thing, right, what comes to you the half half man, half woman butterfly. Right, Yeah, they had one antenna was actually smaller than the others. And as you say, the reproductive organs refused together. And this is actually something called guy Nan Droom Morphy happens from time to time. Yeah, so it serves as kind

of an interesting symbol. I think of the fluidity of of sex and gender that in butterflies, but in just any organism, it's not. It's not so so fixed an issue. It isn't and it's again it's a response to environmental conditions. Um, it's somewhat of a question of energy resources, uh, survival. And we wanted to point out too that we have an episode called Can Animals Be Gay that explores more

of the behavior of animals. We didn't. We want to make a distinction between what we're talking about today in this idea that animals behave in a way that seems gay. I'm putting that in quotes to us. Yeah, when you bring in the human baggage of trying to figure out how animals work. So indeed, check out that episode if you like. We'll make sure that we linked to that in on the landing page. At this episode, it's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You know, we have

a few minutes here. Let's call over the robot and UH have a little listener mail. All right, This one comes to us from Porter. Porter writes and it says, Hi, I'm the digital director at the US Fund for UNI Stuff and also an average Stuff to Blow your Mind listener. I've been working all weekend trying to raise funds for the Nepal earthquake relief effort, and I was listening to Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes early Monday, and when

what do I hear? During the Power of Polite episode, Julie mentioned donating to UNI Stuff is a nice thing to do while explaining the off record indirect politeness strategy. I can't tell you how happy that made me. Donated the unit stuff is a nice thing to do. Hey, Also, restaurants, maybe there should be a National Pizza Day where you give ten percent of your profits to UNI SEF. If you can mention our Nepal donate form on the podcast, I'd be really grateful. Thanks for all the thanks for

all the great episodes over the years. That's unis f USA dot org slash Nepal. That's you in and I c e f u s A dot org slash Nepaul. Thanks Porter and uh yeah, guys, make sure to check that out if if that has been on your mind, um, that would be a great thing to contribute to. We also have a bit of correspondence here from Caroline. This

was a Facebook message that she sent us. She said, I just listened to your episode about politeness, and I thought it was so great When you were leading up to the most impolite society, I literally shouted Eastern Europeans. I laugh because I'm a first generation American whose parents are Polish. I spent much of my life in Poland and the United States, and I can appreciate the direct attitude that Polish people have. It can be very abrasive

to anyone from outside the culture. If I go to Poland for a few weeks at a time, I definitely begin to miss the friendliness of Americans. But I know a lot of my American friends perceived me as very direct and poland it's certainly no big deal for someone at a bus stop to tell a complete stranger that their kid is being too loud? Would that would never happen here? And she's right, it wouldn't. I get the

unique experience of having both personality traits. You did also make a great point about familiarity in Eastern European culture. If you're a stranger, you will be looked at with suspicion, but if you are in the inner circle, you are among some of the kindest, loving people. We wouldn't greet a stranger with kisses, but your closest friends and family definitely get three cheek kisses. I love that you totally have the nail on the head with this episode. Keep

up the great work, Caroline. All right, So there you have it. Hey, if you want to check out more episodes, including that can Animals Be Gay? Episode that we referenced earlier, I don't know where to stuff to blow your mind dot com that is the mothership. That's where you find all of our podcast episodes, videos, blogs, you name it, and if you have some thoughts on animal sexual fluidity and you want to send them to us, We can do so by emailing us at below the mind. How

supp works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other top its, visit house staff works dot com. Yeah,