Sex
...the ability to reproduce asexually, many species have the ability to produce offspring through meiosis and fertilization. Often, individuals of the two sexes attract one another and communicate their readiness to procreate through biological changes, or, in social species, through courtship behaviours.
An organism's sex is defined by its biological role in reproduction, not according to its sexual or other behavior. The female sex is defined as the one which produces the larger gamete and which typically bears the offspring. In contrast, the male sex has a smaller gamete and rarely bears offspring. In some animals and many plants sex may be assigned to specific structures rather than the entire organism. Earthworms, for example, are normally hermaphrodites.
Contents [hide]
1 Sexual reproduction
2 Animal species
3 Humans
3.1 Social and psychological issues
4 In fiction
5 See also
6 References
7 Sources
8 External links and further reading
Sexual reproduction
Hoverflies matingSexual reproduction is a prevalent system for producing new individuals within various species. Individuals of sexually reproducing species produce special kinds of cells called gametes, whose function is specifically to fuse with one unlike gamete and hence form a new individual. This fusion of two gametes is called fertilization. The condition of having types of gametes that are externally similarparticularly in sizeis isogamy; having gametes that are somewhat dissimilar is anisogamy. The condition of having greatly dissimilar gametesparticularly a large, immotile cell and a much smaller, motile oneis oogamy. By convention, the larger gamete cell is associated with female sex. Thus an individual that produces exclusively large gametes (ova in humans) is said to be female, and one that produces exclusively small gametes (spermatozoa in humans) is said to...
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