Sexual reproduction
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species."--The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci |
Illustration: Fashionable Contrasts (1792) by James Gillray.
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Sex refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction. Unlike organisms that only have the ability to reproduce asexually, sexed male and female pairs have the ability to produce offspring through meiosis and fertilization. The two sexes attract one another and communicate their readiness to procreate through differences in their biology.
An organism's sex reflects its biological function in reproduction, not its sexuality 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, sex may be assigned to specific structures rather than the entire organism. Earthworms, for example, are normally hermaphrodites.
See also
- Anisogamy
- Asexual reproduction
- Biological reproduction
- Evolution of sexual reproduction
- Hermaphroditism
- Human sexuality
- Isogamy
- Mate choice
- Mating in fungi
- Meiosis
- Natural competence
- Operational sex ratio
- Sex
- Sex organ
- Sexual intercourse
