[ExI] two genders? is that really all there are? RE: Will ems have two genders?

[John Clark]

>
>
>
>
Rafal Smigrodzki
​
Wrote:

 >…Is there a reason to expect that ems would have a male and a female
> gender?


Is there a reason
​ to expect​
that humans or any other multi cellular animal
​
would have a male and a female gender?
​The embarrassing answer is "not that we know of". The existence of sex is
one of the biggest mysteries in Evolutionary Biology. And in fact there are
a group of animals called "
Bdelloidea
​" that have been around for at least 40 million years and they have no
males, only females.
Bdelloidea
​ are ​
​multi cellular
​ and ​big enough to be seen if you have good eyes but have no sex.

Some textbooks say there are 450 different species Bdelloidea
​
but that's misleading, a species is a group that can interbred but
Bdelloidea
​
engage in no breeding; so really there are 450 types of
​
Bdelloidea
​
that look different from each other, but "species" is a meaningless concept
for them.

 John K Clark
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