Episode 278: Gender Diverse Animals

This week is Connor's episode, and we're going to learn about some animals that don't conform to "typical" gender roles, one way or another. I'll be at ConCarolinas this week, from June 3 through 5, including recording a live crossover episode with Arcane Carolinas! Further reading: Species of algae with three sexes that all mate in pairs identified in Japanese river How a microbe chooses among seven sexes Facultative Parthenogenesis in California Condors The sparrow with four sexes Chinstrap penguins make good dads: Laysan albatrosses make good moms: Black swans make good dads: Some rams really like other rams (photo by Henry Holdsworth): New Mexico whiptail lizards are all females: California condor females don't always need a male to produce fertilized eggs: Clownfish change sex under some circumstances: The white-throated sparrow essentially has four sexes: You are awesome (photo by By Eric Rolph)! Show transcript: “Hey y’all, this is Connor. Welcome to a very special Pride Month edition of the Strange Animals Podcast.” This week we have Connor’s episode! We decided to make it the very last episode in our Kickstarter month so that it’s as close to the month of June as possible, because June is Pride Month and our episode is about gender-diverse animals! Don’t worry, parents of very young children, we won’t be discussing mating practices except in very general terms. Pride month celebrates people’s differences when it comes to gender expression and sexuality. That’s why its symbol is the rainbow, because a rainbow is made up of all different colors the same way there are different kinds of people. Sometimes people get angry when they hear about Pride month because they think there are only two genders, and that those two genders should only behave in certain ways. Pffft. That’s not even true when it comes to animals, and humans are a lot more socially complicated. For instance, let’s start by talking about a humble creature called algae. If you remember episode 129, about the blurry line between animals and plants, you may remember that algae isn’t actually a plant or an animal. Some species resemble plants more than animals, like kelp, but they’re not actually plants. In July of 2021, scientists in Japan announced that a species of freshwater algae has three sexes: male, female, and bisexual. All three sexes can pair up with any of the others to reproduce and their offspring may be male, female, or bisexual at random. Even though the algae has been known to science for a long time, no one realized it has three sexes because most of the time, algae reproduces by cloning itself. The research team thinks that a lot of algae species may have three sexes but researchers just haven’t been looking for it. Yes, I realize that was a weird place to start, but it’s also fascinating! It’s also not even nearly as complicated as a protozoan called Tetrahymena thermophila, which has seven sexes. Let’s look at a bird next, the penguin. You’ve probably heard of the book And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins who adopt an egg and raise the baby chick together. For some reason some people get so angry at those penguins! Never trust someone who doesn’t like baby penguins,