The Species That Change Sex
living in the vacuum of space.One superpower that many species have is the ability to swap their sex at some point during their lives, changing from male to female and vice versa, or being a bit of both.This is an ability of more species than you might expect: up to 5 percent of animal species are capable of switching sex, which equates to 30 percent of all non-insect species, El País reported.These sex-fluid animals come in two forms: simultaneous hermaphrodites, which have both male and female sexual traits at the same time, and sequential hermaphrodites, which exist as males and females at different stages of their lives.
The first category mostly contains invertebrates like worms and snails, while the second category is more widespread in fish and certain frog and reptile species."Sequential hermaphrodites are species where individuals are one sex and then change sex to the other sex (sequentially)," Stuart West, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek. "For example [some] shrimp are males first, and then change to sex to female, whereas many reef fish are female first and then change sex to male (e.g.
the bluehead wrasse)."The Pacific cleaner shrimp get their name as eating parasites and dead skin off other marine animals makes up most of its diet All of them start as males but after a few moults will become hermaphrodite allowing them to function both male and female #animals pic.twitter.com/m8C57y2AzrThese individuals that change their sex are able to reproduce as both sexes, both before and after sex change.
