(no subject)

[urbpan]

On richmackin's lj, there was a stupid, incorrect statement by an anti gay marriage bigot to the effect of "All species require two opposite sexes to reproduce."

Not only is this not true of all species (all bacteria and many if not most protists reproduce by splitting in half; many plants have both male and female parts on the same individual) it's not even true of all animals: earthworms, snails and most barnicles are hermaphroditic, aphids and many stick insects are all female, and some fish can change sexes in the middle of their life.

Fungi have more than two sexes--in fact, check out this BBC article for the total number of fungal sexes, as well as an evolutionary explanation of why we only have two:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/specials/sheffield_99/447058.stm

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

36,000?!?! Holy crap!

[rwblackbird.livejournal.com]

wow.
what if the mutations wern't "catastrophic"? imagine the variety of humans and human like creatures that would could exsist on every continent and island.
kind of like The Seedling Stars by James Blish

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 'cept for our built-in xenophobia would make them one-time-only mutants. Even albinos (not to mention shorter-than-normal guys) have a hard time getting dates!

[rwblackbird.livejournal.com]

yes, but with mutations so rampant, who's to say what is the norm and who is the "freak"?

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

If everyone was a mutant then nobody would be a mutant, right?

It really would be interesting to live in a society where the aesthetics used in sexual contexts weren't so appearance-oriented.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bazilisk_/]

Those idiotic right wing bigots aren't exactly the biggest fans of science.