Question: What do you think would happen if there was only one gender in the world

Sakshi Sharda answered on 8 Mar 2018:

That’s a great question. So actually, there are some animals which do have only one sex! For example, water fleas, insects. They reproduce just fine and they are able to go through life quiet well.

Why some of us (animals) have two sexes is interesting. Many animals have too many parasites on them, including us. And if there are too many parasites, they could just kill us right? and if that’s the case, how can we keep our race alive? that’s where the two sexes come into play.

We inherit half chromosomes from our mothers and half from our fathers. Chromosomes are threads encoded with all the information to make our bodies- how we grow, develop to eye and skin colour and EVERYTHING we have. Imagine that half the threads coming from a mother and half from the father combine to form a huge ball of threads with lots of information, which can help us to grow, develop and also fight infections. Because the chromosomes are loaded with information, they can form a million or even a billion combinations of different traits. These combinations help to fight parasites, because certain combinations are better at making us better in fighting them.

If there was one sex, there would be no combinations, which means that all individuals could die if they had parasites! That’s why we need two sexes to have different combinations of traits. That’s also why no two individuals in the world look the same, because we have so many combinations possible. isn’t it funny that parasites have such a big role to play! Nature is amazing!

Keep asking such great questions and do let me know if you haven’t understood anything, I would be very happy to tell you more 🙂