Frog Morphs
Dude looks like a lady?!?This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, and on how male frogs are morphing into Moms. Tyrone Hayes, from UC Berkeley, studies how chemicals affect amphibians. Hayes exposed boy tadpoles to the herbicide atrazine - the planet's most common weed killer. He kept them in ponds polluted with the pesticide at LOWER than EPA-permitted levels. Four years later, he gave each frog a physical. And boy, or girl, did he get a surprise! Because ten percent of the "male" frogs had lost all manliness. They had less testosterone and sperm, low sex drives, feminine croaks - they'd even sprouted ovaries! In fact, some of the transformed frogs mated with unexposed males - AND PRODUCED YOUNG! Now THAT'S an extreme makeover. Even weirder, while Born-Again males can reproduce like other mothers, chromosomally they're still guys. So every tadpole spawned will ALSO be male. Not good for species survival. So lay off the atrazine, or in place of HER stories frogs will just be HIStory. Get it? History. All right.
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