Gender-bending creatures: How animals defy human binary norms
Siddhartha Jana
Sequential hermaphroditism is a phenomenon in which many animals change sex in response to biological triggers or environmental factors, defying human binary gender conventions.
Source: Canva
Clownfish use protandry, in which the dominant male changes into a female in order to ensure the colony's survival after the female dies.
Source: Canva
To ensure genetic diversity, wrasses, like the bluehead wrasse, exhibit protogyny, in which females transform into males in the absence of a dominant male.
Source: Canva
Depending on their social position in a stack, slipper limpets use their proximity to other limpets to reproduce, changing their sex from male to female.
Source: Canva
In order to adjust to the lack of a dominant male in their group, parrotfish initially develop as females before changing into males.
Source: Canva
In Australia, bearded dragons can undergo unusual gender changes as a result of temperature-induced development of female reproductive organs.
Source: Canva
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