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submitted 4 months ago by spujb@lemmy.cafe to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[-] cymbal_king@lemmy.world 63 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The "nature only has two sexes" crowd obviously never heard of Schizophyllum commune which has thousands

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 31 points 4 months ago

Or any of the fishes that can transition from one gender to another.

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 4 months ago

Which is so hella cool

And some frogs and shit can too

Nature is fuckin wild

[-] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

One of them heard about the frogs once. He blamed the (((globalists))) for lacing the drinking water with magical trans chemicals to turn people gay.

In reality, it was industrial leakage by the capitalists that he loves, and was caught by the government that he hates.

[-] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

Just wait until they hear about bees!

[-] argarath@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

What about bees? I didn't know they had any sex changing or multiple different sexes, only that the males only existed for mating with the queen and then die

[-] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm no expert, but here's a Wikipedia page about it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee_life_cycle

And a more in-depth/easy to read article:

https://askentomologists.com/2015/08/05/honeybee-genetics-how-do-they-work/

TL;DR: All fertilized eggs become female bees. Whether a fertilized egg becomes a worker or a queen is based completely on how much royal jelly they are fed by other workers as larvae. Drones (male bees) are born from unfertilized eggs and only contain one set of chromosomes.

Also, there are reptiles that change sex based on the temperature in which their eggs develop. Sex gets weird in the animal kingdom.

[-] argarath@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Cool!!! I didn't know the male bees were unfertilized eggs!!! That's so crazy!!!

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 25 points 4 months ago

The extent of their education would appear to end at kindergarten.

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 4 months ago

I swear the more I learn about biology the more it looks like people are riding by the seat of their pants

And their pants are so much more advanced than my pants it melts my brain

Science man says really cool and confusing shit

"You've dedicated your life to this bro, you know more than I could fathom on the topic, I believe you bro"

[-] BallsandBayonets@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

I'm absolutely a trans ally but what I don't understand about how science defines the sexes without reproduction. If those mushrooms have thousands of sexes, must they participate in gigantic fungal orgies every time they reproduce? Of course given that fungi are in an entirely different kingdom than mammals, I wouldn't be surprised if how sexes are defined is entirely different and irrelevant to how they're defined in animals.

My biology education ended at high school and unfortunately it was a high school that taught that the earth was 6000 years old so to say it was lacking would be an understatement.

[-] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 22 points 4 months ago

Basically for these fungi, only different "sexes" can reproduce with each other. Still only need two for reproduction. They can't reproduce with the same sex. So A can mate with B, C, D, etc. A can't mate with A. Do dna sequencing on a few that you know can mate with one another and you can find where the sex allele/gene is. Then you can sequence the population at large to see how many different sex alleles there are. You can confirm or do old school observation to see which ones can reproduce with another.

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