by Richard Peacock
Sex change. Admit it, we've all thought about it: what would it be like to have our genitals surgically mutilated and sewn back together in the approximation of another gender's? Maybe we even have friends or family members who have gone through the expensive and painful surgery. But, unlike my uncle Samuel (or as she's now known, Samuelie), there are some species of coral reef fish which can change sex spontaneously, and without the disfiguring scars that alert guys you meet on the Internet to your recent past as a man.
You see, dear reader, Mother Nature is one freaky bitch. She wants her animals to get it on all the time, regardless of what's dangling between their ventral fins. To satisfy her unnatural cravings, she has come up with some pretty clever techniques to thwart God's laws of decency.
Take the cleaner wrasse for example. This fish typically lives in small groups of one male and several females, known as a harem (seriously). If the male dies or is otherwise removed from the group, the largest female will spontaneously change sex, become larger, change colors, and start shaving.
This happens because the presence of the male was actually suppressing the natural inclination of the females to change sex. Let me repeat that: the females want to change sex, and if removed from the presence of a male, they will.
But what about in the case of my aunt Samuelie, where a male animal becomes female? The most famous example of this is the friendly clownfish. You may remember him as the dad, Marlin, in the movie Finding Nemo. In the movie, Marlin's wife is killed, along with most of their eggs. He is then left to raise the one surviving egg, Nemo, all alone.
But if the plot of Finding Nemo happened in real life, Nemo's dad would have simply changed sex and started catting around with the other bachelor clown fish, leaving little Nemo to raise himself. Who's going to teach him about girls? Who's going to play catch with him using a pearl as a baseball? No one, that's who. No one.
But Mother Nature doesn't care about Nemo. And she doesn't care about the standards of decency that all civilized people agree upon. She only wants to you have crazy, absurd sex all the time, around the clock. And so do I.
Further Insight: Physiology of Sex-Change in Reef Fish
Science Rocks is written by Richard Peacock, inventor of the communication satellite. He now lives in Sri Lanka where he ponders the riddles of this, and other worlds. Email him at richard@amateurscientist.org.
