this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
453 points (97.1% liked)

Science Memes

10348 readers
1569 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Are they even females if their species only has one sex?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Well, female and male are defined based on their gonads. So yes, these are females because they produce egg cells. There are also animals that have more than two sexes or have sexes that change over time, or that are even weirder. But in all these cases, how we classify their sex is by their gonads.

Philosophically speaking, sex as a category is just a way of abstraction for us to better understand the world. But it is just that, a simplified view on the world, a social construct.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

to the lizards - they probably wouldn't call themselves females if they could

to humans - our definition of female is producing the large gamete so if all those lizards do that then, from our human perspective, they're female