Sexual Nature 3/3

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2013

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When a couple are expecting a baby, the big question is: girl or boy? Adam Rutherford explores the many ways Nature decides that question. If you’re a human, a kangaroo or a komodo dragon, it’s in the sex chromosomes. If you’re a crocodile, it’s the temperature of your egg. And if you’re a fish, it can be one sex first and, later in the life, the other.

Adam’s investigation includes conversation with Professor Jennifer Graves, a leading authority on sex determination, at La Trobe University in Australia. She explains what the weird nature of the platypus’ sex chromosomes tells us about how human gender is decided.

Adam also meets one of London Zoo’s Komodo Dragons, the world’s largest and fiercest lizard. Female dragons can produce young without mating with males, but all their babies are males. How so?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Choosing what to
0:32.1	watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:36.5	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:41.5	telly we share what we've been watching.
0:43.7	Cladie Aide!
0:45.7	Loads of games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:48.2	Lovely.
0:49.0	Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:51.2	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:54.7	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds just before this
1:00.0	BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know. My name's
1:04.4	Linda Davies and I commissioned podcasts for BBC Sounds. As you'd expect at the
1:09.2	BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable
1:13.7	experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the
1:19.3	BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
	...

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