Sex Determination: More Complicated Than You Thought
From something as small and complex as a chromosome to something as seemingly simple as the weather, sex determination systems vary significantly across the animal kingdom. Biologist and teacher...
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Translator: Bedirhan Cinar My wife is pregnant right now with our first child, and when people see her with her big baby bump, the first question people ask, almost without fail, is, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" Now, there are some assumptions behind that question that we take for granted because of our familiarity with our own human biology. For human babies, we take it for granted that there's a 50/50 chance of either answer, boy or girl. But why is it that way? Well, the answer depends on the sex determination system that has evolved for our species. You see, for most mammals, the sex of a baby is determined genetically with the XY chromosome system. Mammals have a pair of sex chromosomes, one passed down from mom, and one fro...
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Translator: Bedirhan Cinar My wife is pregnant right now with our first child, and when people see her with her big baby bump, the first question people ask, almost without fail, is, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" Now, there are some assumptions behind that question that we take for granted because of our familiarity with our own human biology. For human babies, we take it for granted that there's a 50/50 chance of either answer, boy or girl. But why is it that way? Well, the answer depends on the sex determination system that has evolved for our species. You see, for most mammals, the sex of a baby is determined genetically with the XY chromosome system. Mammals have a pair of sex chromosomes, one passed down from mom, and one fro...
