Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Science Fact not Fiction?

When Reality Seems Like Science Fiction to You, Maybe You Have Let Your Mind Get Too Narrow.

We think of most living things as male or female. When a baby is born, what is the doctor expected to say? "It's a boy" or "It's a girl".

One or the other, not both or neither, not 95% boy or 80% girl.

Some languages go so far as to call all nouns "he" or "she", not because anyone thinks of them as having gender, but like there is only "he" or "she" - no "it", and only "his" or "hers" - no "its".

So some languages have male TVs and female beds.

We are all taught to assume certain things, but sometimes these social assumptions are simply not true.

I have heard that alligator eggs are not genetically male or female, but that the temperature the egg is kept at before it hatches, determines if it the embryo becomes male or female.

I have seen mother aquarium fish become male. I have read that in some kind of eels, they are all born female, and the ones that live to be old, turn male.

But to read about birds that have several genders? Sounds so different.

I want to ask: "how come I have never noticed this?" But then, how often would a person actually look at wild birds enough to know which were male or female, and which 'varieties' were really third, fourth, or fifth genders of a the same species?

This is just so odd, I wonder why it hasn't gone around the Internet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender

From: http://darlingyouaredoingitwrong.blogspot.com
permission to cross-post