Was researching clown fish and saw this. Interesting.
Other sea life that are known to change their gender include wrasses, which is a type of fish, and moray eels. Unlike clownfish, wrasses switch from female to male with the largest female switching to male and taking over a group of females.
As mentioned, clownfish form a symbiotic relationship with the sea anemone they live in. The clownfish eat various small invertebrates and algae that could harm the anemone. Their feces also serves to help fertilize the anemone. The sea anemone offers a great deal of protection for the clownfish from predators. The clownfish also gets food in the way of scraps from the anemone’s food. The clownfish return the favor by using their bright coloring to lure fish into the anemone, which are then killed by the anemone’s poison and eaten, with the scraps going to the clownfish. Finally, it is thought that the clownfish’s frequent activity in and around the anemone provides better water circulation, which helps the health of the anemone.
It isn’t exactly known how the clownfish survive the anemone’s very potent poison. It is thought that the mucus coating their skin must be made up of some sort of sugar compound, rather than of proteins, which perhaps makes it so the anemone doesn’t recognize the clownfish as a potential food source and so doesn’t sting them. Clownfish are also somewhat resistant to the toxins in the anemone, but not wholly. When directly exposed to the toxins, when it penetrates their mucus layer, they will die like any other fish.
Clownfish live in warmer water regions in the Indian and Pacific oceans. They can particularly be found in the Great Barrier Reef and in the Red Sea.
Because clownfish breed so easily in captivity and exhibit near constant, quirky activity while awake, they have become extremely popular aquarium fish.
Occasionally, humans can also change sex naturally, at least in terms of changing external body parts. In the vast majority of these cases where the change occurs naturally, a human born with female genitalia, will turn male after puberty. This is usually due to a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency (5alpha-RD-2) or 17-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency (17beta-HSD-3). Even more rarely, a person born with male parts will naturally turn female after puberty. How this occurs from a genetic standpoint isn’t currently well understood. It can also occasionally happen that a male or female human can be born with the opposite body parts and general physical appearance than their chromosome pairs indicate.
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