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RE: Sex change in fish
>I find this situation to quite humorous as who knows how our societies would
>have developed and settled if we homo sapiens did not know for sure what we
>were going to be...
>
There is a case of sex switching in Humans actually. Apparently, there's a
community (in the Carribean, I think) where a particular genetic "defect"
is common-ish. This defect is in the receptor for testosterone that's
active before puberty. When you hit puberty, apparently males switch over
to another receptor system. So what happens is that the testes produce
testosterone to tell all the cells "hey, we're male" but the cells of the
body don't pick it up, so everything develops as female. They when puberty
hits and the other set of receptors come on line, then the cells do get the
signal, and instead of the little girl developing breasts she develops a
penis and becomes male. I don't know about the details of how they deal
with this, but apparently it's common enough that they're never sure what
gender their daughters are until puberty. Anyway, thought you'd be
interested.
Guinho
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