Snails are hermaphroditic animals since each specimen produces sperm and eggs.
The Greek word hermaphróditos , whose ending is influenced by Aphrodite (name of the Greek goddess of love), came to Latin as hermaphrodītus . The concept arrived in our language as hermaphrodite , an adjective that refers to someone who has both sexes (female and male).
In zoology and biology , a hermaphroditic organism is one whose reproductive system is mixed and can therefore generate both female and male gametes . Self-fertilization, however, is very unusual.
Some examples
Earthworms are examples of hermaphrodite animals. They have female and male reproductive organs and reproduce through mating. The same happens with snails , which produce eggs and sperm and mate to achieve fertilization .
Hermaphrodite flowers , on the other hand, bring together the two sexes. In this case, as the gametes reach maturity at different times, fertilization is only possible through cross-pollination.
In Greek mythology, Hermaphrodite is a descendant of Hermes and Aphrodite.
hermaphrodite people
The Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) recognizes the notion of hermaphrodite to refer to the person who has ovaries and testicles , giving the appearance of the existence of both sexes in the same organism. However, it is usually considered that pseudohermaphroditism exists in humans, since the reproductive possibility of both forms does not exist.
In general, it is preferred to speak of intersex subjects and not of hermaphrodites when female and male sexual characteristics are evident to different degrees. It is not possible for a human being to produce semen with sperm and, at the same time, have a reproductive system capable of producing a fetus.
Klinefelter syndrome
In this context is Klinefelter syndrome , which only attacks men and can manifest itself through characteristics such as the presence of large mammary glands (what is known as gynecomastia ), the production of sperm in deficient volumes ( azoospermia ), incomplete descent of one or both of the testicles ( cryptorchidism ) and the micropenis. While all of these traits distance the subject from the general description of “man,” most scientists do not consider it a form of intersexuality or hermaphroditism.
A human individual with so-called true hermaphroditism must present gonads (organs composed of gametes of a certain sex) whose tissue combines the two sexes in different proportions; This is known as ovosthesis or mixed gonad , and is defined as the gonad in which seminiferous tubules and ovarian follicles are found. As mentioned above, there are no documented cases of people who can produce sperm and eggs simultaneously, but in each hermaphrodite individual only one of the two types develops correctly.
Hermaphrodite, a mythological character
Returning to Greek mythology, in it we find an ancient character whose name in our language is Hermaphroditus or Hermaphrodite . This is one of the children of Aphrodite and Hermes, from the combination of whose names he received his. Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, so the birth of Hermaphroditus was the result of an act of infidelity; This led her to leave her son on Mount Ida, where the nymphs raised him.
As the years went by, Hermaphroditus acquired unparalleled beauty , and one day he embarked on a journey through the lands of Ancient Greece. When he was passing through Halicarnassus he decided to bathe naked in a lake, and it was then that the spirit Salmacride approached him with the intention of conquering him. After Hermaphroditus rejected her, she hugged him tightly and begged the gods for nothing to separate them; They granted him his wish, and thus fused their bodies, to give rise to a hermaphrodite entity.