Are you a Tarantula hobbyist? If so, we invite you to join our community! Once you join you'll be able to post messages, upload pictures of your pets and enclosures and chat with other Tarantula enthusiasts. Sign up today!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="octanejunkie" data-source="post: 176450" data-attributes="member: 3872">Tarantulas, no. Not that has been scientifically documented.The most notable, and made popular by the movie Jurassic Park, is that of certain frog species. This is when my interest in the topic occurred. In the movie, Hammond's scientists used frog DNA to splice missing genetic code from dinosaur DNA when intending only to produce males as a form of reproductive control. They were surprised by gender swapping velociraptors who bred and reproduced.There was a secondary dependency Crichton wrote about that was also genetically engineered into the resurrected stock that the movie conveniently omitted; a lycopene dependance. In the absence of lycopene being added to the dino's food by their keepers the animals were supposed to die off, as a means of control. However, if an erant, hungry dino found your tomato garden; game over science. Lycopene is abundantly present in tomatoes which is why cultures that eat a lot of tomatoes are supposed to be long lived and virile.The phenomena observed in frogs is theorized to be nature's correction to continue the species, but it has been found in many (if not most) cases that pollution has caused this anomaly of nature, rather than grand design. The pesticide atrazine has cause more frogs to turn female than "genetic coding" or mother nature ever did. Thanks, science.There are a few species of snake that lay self-fertilized eggs, virgin births if you will, never having mated. This is thanks to something called parenthogenesis. This is theorized to be nature's answer to sexual scarcity, what people said about the frogs en masse, however the snake doesn't change gender. This is one of a few natural methods of species survival, sexual manipulation that IS naturally occurring.There are a few different manner of "gender swapping" that can occur in nature, often referred to as bilateral gynandromorphism where as both male and female genes are present and can express themselves more prominently at different times of the animal's life. Not to be confused with hermaphroditism, or to be exact simultaneous hermaphroditism, where both sets of reproductive organisms are present and functional; like in certain eels.There is a less common gender swap that is well documented that occurs embryonically, and in certains species, like Pogona vitticeps, where heat during gestation can influence gender post initial-determination. Male embryos convert to female embryos, become semi-hermaphroditic and express both male and female behaviors and have larger clutches of eggs than singularly sexually expressed female embryos as sexually mature females. This, and yet Bearded Dragons still command high prices in the pet trade. Certain birds and butterflies have been observed to express both male and female traits, but we usually talk and teach about the birds and the bees. No wonder we have so much sexual dysfunction as a society.</blockquote>

Verification