From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Mon 04 Sep 2000 - 21:20:11 EEST
Trotsk, in that annoying quote-convention of him and his mailer: <g>
> Prithee, do go on. ;-) I infer you mean that they'd have one sex, but two
> sorts of gametes, then? >>
>
> That's the usual meaning of hermaphrodite :-)
Hrm, depends what you mean by 'usual'... (Admittedly one would think
Sandy might use such words with a degree of precision, if the context
is the GB...) Informally, most users of such terms wouldn't think
once (much less twice) about gametes. (It just so happens that
most informal usages, through biological accident, to so correspond...)
> There are many botanical instances of plants which are male and female
> at different times of the year (i.e. their stamens mature faster than their
> stigmas, or vice versa), which is an alternative model to the usual animal
> hermaphrodite (such as snails). OTOH, it resembles some of the animal-based
> mermen rather too closely, IMO - given the 'intersex' associations of water
> in Glorantha, I think there ought to be some blatant hermaphrodites in the
> oceans somewhere.
I'd have thought that that, too, would be within the gamut of possible
merfolk sexuality. Not that a candidate species springs to mind.
Though since the distinction between 'isogamous' and 'true hermaphrodite'
isn't, so far as I can see, necessarily directly observable, unless
there are discernably separate sexual characteristics, or whatever.
(I'm assuming the gametes wouldn't be directly sexable...)
> Seaweed can be oogamous (e.g. kelp), isogamous, anisogamous [...]
And you didn't think 'thingygamous' was a good subject line, eh?
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