Hmm

[maderr]

Now there's an interesting idea. Not my cup of tea, but I'm sure someone somewhere would like it, if they have not already used it. I've seen this episode of Good Eats before, it's on shrimp. One of the little blurbs they toss up says that some shrimp change sex from male to female after one year of sexual activity. That would be an interesting concept to play with - a species where they start out one gender, but after x number of years switch to the other. I wonder what the reasons for that would be?

Comments

[amiko-16.livejournal.com]

not enough of that sex at that given time?
i dunno XD;

[flyby311.livejournal.com]

:O There's actually a fish that changes from female to male if the male of their group dies. And it's REALLY weird, because they physically change as well and... *tries to look up*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_angelfish

XD

[lokiloo.livejournal.com]

Geckos and Groupers are all female until the breeding season, then the larger ones will gender switch until the season is over. There's also a species of lizard in the South West that is all female, and to bred they will mount eachother.

It gives me hope for our species....<3

[nikerymis.livejournal.com]

Um, maybe based on some intrinsic thing? Gender identity? You spend so long as one and then so long as the other during adolescence to figure out which is better for you mentally?

Though if it's not, and just a time-based thing -- exactly once a year or whatever -- that'd be cool to play with. ^___^ Like, partner-wise. It'd probably be timed from the when they were born - a year later they change gender -- or maybe shorter intervals when they're younger, lengthening to a year long when they get past their teen years... but then you could play with male-male, male-female, and female-female pairings for all the same couple and I think that would be all kinds of interesting to play with. ^___^

Or I could just be rambling. must go to crash now, am deadz0r, but interesting. ^___^

[gwaihiril.livejournal.com]

Ooh, we studied this in bio class this year! I think the most common reason is to control the population - if you want to keep a population growing, the male/female ratio should be about the same, right? It can also depend on the nutrients availible, whether the conditions are right for having offspring. Not quite related to male/female, but there are some species which change between sexual and asexual reproduction, like hydras, an aquatic organism that produces genetically identical offspring through asexual budding, where an offspring develops on the end of a polyp then breaks off (think like a flower growing, but the flower becomes an independant organism) and sexual reproduction of two hydras. Sexual reproduction allows for more variation in gene expression, which could be good or bad; if there's a certain gene which is favorable, asexual reproduction insures that all the offspring have it. If there's a change in environment, sexual reproduction allows the chance for more adaptations. Hm...I don't remember everything, and my textbook is in my locker at school, so I can't tell you much more. Oh, though there is an entire class of animals where every organism is female (reproduction through asexual budding, I believe) except for a few degenerate males, who die quickly. There's also a species of lizard that's entirely female, but pairs of females will imitate the sexual behavior of male/female pairs because it makes them more fertile.

Looking back, that's probably more than you really wanted to know and a bit off topic....blame it on my giant biology exam coming up.

[maderr.livejournal.com]

I meant more why it would exist in a human type society, but hey, the more information the better to come up with a reason ^_^ Some of those could apply, it just depends on the environment and other factors.

[spy-c.livejournal.com]

Applying this to humans would be weird...

Hey, maybe, over time we'd evolve this way too. Then, I do'no population decrease? Lord knows, we need it.

[rykaine.livejournal.com]

Species obligation to procreate means that some are born female, but then once that cycle is concluded for them (aka they've fulfilled their duties) they... mature into a state where sex is recreation not obligation? Or something.

[miikarin.livejournal.com]

Kind of reminds me of Click: http://www.netcomics.com/comic/click.htm a Korean comic about a boy who spends the first 16 years of his life as a boy and then the rest as a girl.

No reasons really given other than blaming it on some buried gene.

[tygati.livejournal.com]

Sounds like something that might crop up in the Kidnapped 'verse... 9.9

=)

[shiyuri-say.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm new here but actually I've been stalking you for a while. XD So, I suddenly decided to act on my impulse & post a comment. ^^

You see, your pondering reminded me of "Simoun," a shoujo-ai anime. I only watched 1 ep, but still remember it. This is what it says on Anime News Network, and I quote:

"On the world of Daituuriku, everyone is born female. To maintain a stable population, countries like the highly industrialized Shoukoku medically alter some of their population at birth to become male, while in Kyuukoku each person must decide during a special ceremony at age 17 what gender to assume as an adult."

So, there's high-tech involved and there's also divine power involved. Pick your choice. :D I guess you can create a tragic history or something similar, weaving a tale how males were wiped out in ancient time (like dinosaurs? O_O ). Us highly intellectual females later have to look for a way to cope... So, yeah... huh...

Uh, I know it's lame and quite cliché, but it just popped up in my head. ^^'''

Re: =)

[sunandshadow.livejournal.com]

The anime movie _They Were 11_ also has a character from a planet where they must choose around age 17 whether to mature into male or female.

[alixkat.livejournal.com]

Shrimp are yummy.

[rui-hime.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, certain animals switch genders because there is either a lack of males/females in the existing population or changes in water temperature - which I believe happens with the shrimp.

In a human setting, gender-switching would likely manifest as a form of adaptation if one half of the species was rendered incapable of procreation. Switching genders just for the heck of it does seem rather interesting though.

[sunandshadow.livejournal.com]

I started writing a story once about a race where everyone went through one puberty to become male at age 15, then another to become female at age 30. The vague biological idea behind it was that the world as a particularly rough and dangerous one and people under 30 wouldn't have enough resources to bear and raise children. It was also a matriarchal clan society, because the environment was too dangerous for individuals or nuclear families to survive very well.

I was really frustrated when writing it because of the awkwardness of pronouns and talking about the past. My main character was a 30 year old who had just turned female, which went along with being given a sort of year's paid vacation from regular clan work to go get pregnant by some foreign male (bring fresh dna back) and get the adventuresomeness out of her system so she could settle down to being a mommy and part of the bureaucracy afterward. What she does is go to a particular place where, when she was a 16 year old boy, he had through some trickery arranged to sire a child even though the father was officially listed as a more senior male. Having a female character reminisce about things they had dnoe while male quickly got horribly confusing, lol.

[marasmine.livejournal.com]

I think you would have to have a name change with the physical change which might make it easier to have her thinking about his past, if he is almost a separate person. But I can see where it got so brain twisting!

[sunandshadow.livejournal.com]

actually in my particular version a person's personality did not change at all with the physical change, only their social status really changed (like one of the other posts mentioned the 'younger' male gender is thought of as more childlike, reckless, hoodlums, and somewhat disposable soldiers while the 'older' female gender are thought of as adult, less passionate, more orderly, and valuable civilians. But it's a very gradual change; the oldest males are trusted with authority over the younger ones, the youngest females are expected to be distracted by sex, babies, and the adventure of being the one with the money and power for once while the older females make the important political and economic decisions for the clan.

But anyway for my particular story it was important to see the same person in male and female phases because I wanted to look at parenting from both sides, and how the change from male to female was both a cause for grief (the character's lover was no longer attracted to them, the character could never top again, their life was half over) and a cause for joy (start of a new adventure, they could experience bearing a child, suddenly lots of males were eager to court them).

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I read a short story in Analog once where the aliens were female til about age 30, then switched. They were considerably misogynistic, since being female was literally being a child, "too young", inexperienced, etc., so diplomacy demanded that humans not mention being permanently gendered (because it was "wrong" and "perverted"), or being female if they were women (because they'd get the "aren't you cute, go run along and play while the wise elders do important work" treatment).

The ending, in retrospect, was rather annoying... not just because it turned out the aliens had been bioengineered to switch genders midlife (though that was pretty *headsmack*), but because it was brushed off as the doings of a "sect of perverts". That was it. Not environmental or social pressure, not some great plague, just a bunch of "icky perverts" deciding it would be way hot if they could experience both sides of the sexual equation. (Which, okay, yeah, it would be, but... oh well, I don't think transgendered people were on the radar at all at the time the story was written, so it could hardly be expected to address that.)

A real reason for this to happen could be pure population. If you can't change the birth rate (1 baby/female/time unit), a high mortality rate would lead to needing a higher percentage of women to birth babies before they die... and surviving long enough to turn male usually means better genes to pass on. You only need one man to have x babies/time unit, while you need x women to have x babies/time unit. Instead of the 50/50 ratio of fertile humans, you'd get something more like 80/20, living females vs. living males.

On the flip side, if you have a very high population, can't hammer birth control into people's heads, can't engineer enough space for everyone, and are too humanitarian to tolerate starvation, plagues, and forms of genocide, then you could bioengineer to start male and change over part or most of the way through a female's fertile years. Then surviving long enough to carry babies means better genes, and far fewer children.

Both of these seem rather a long shot, unless they came about naturally (in which case, the former seems much more likely than the latter in terms of actual species survival). Fertility treatments and medical care (for underpopulation); and creative maximization of food production, use of space, and birth control campaigns (for overpopulation) would be easier on the whole than changing an entire species over to genderswitching.

[avalon13.livejournal.com]

..is it bad you say that and all I can think is how its possible for them to impregnate themselves?

[goldenwolfwitch.livejournal.com]

It's better than the fct that all I can think is "holy shit, shrimp can change gender". My mind is totally blown, here, I always thought that gender was fixed in all species that weren't hermaphrodites.

[cobecat.livejournal.com]

Not a species, but Viginia Woolf's "Orlando" does exactly that with the main character. It might not be to your tastes but I still suggest reading it--I enjoyed it immensely.

[anialove.livejournal.com]

All I can think of right now is my biology teacher telling the class, "You have to mutate the shit out of an organism to get a male."

[marasmine.livejournal.com]

I read a sci-fi story that had a three stage alien life form - male, female and elder. This complicated creature was just a sideline to the main plot of 'intrepid earthmen exploring the universe' but it intrigued me. As far as I remember the creature started out as a horse sized six-legged thing with two arms. At each change one set of legs was cast off with attached torso part. The young were eggs or larvae and were in the cast off segment which they fed off. I can't remember if they were male or female first, but as it was a long time ago I expect they started female. The final biped elder was asexual. I think there were distinct personality and brainpower/attitude changes with the transformations. The intrepid earthmen were rather shaken to realise that what they had considered to be three seperate species were in fact just stages in one species. I think there was little mixing between the different sexes and vitually no child care.

But of course I could be remembering it a lot differently to how it was written!