There is also a high degree of sexual and gender diversity in the animal kingdom. Find two of the following animals to win our Pride Month Special Challenge. Win a prize here by making eight observations of different species of the following animals. Happy Pride! 🌈

Aphid

In the spring and summer, female aphids live exclusively among themselves and reproduce through “parthenogenesis” without any involvement from males. The offspring are born alive and are genetically identical clones of the mother. This saves the aphid the time it would take to find a mate and mate. As temperatures drop and days grow shorter in the fall, the females suddenly give birth to both females and males, which then reproduce sexually.

Snails

Most snails, such as the Roman snail and many other land snails, are hermaphrodites. This means they possess both fully functional male and female reproductive organs. During mating, they exchange sperm, so that in the end both snails can lay eggs.

Blue Tit

Blue tits generally live in social monogamy, meaning they form stable pairs that raise their young together. However, DNA analyses show that in nearly every other brood, there are chicks whose father is not the mother’s social partner. In many cases, therefore, female blue tits do not adhere to sexual monogamy. ^{(https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/287/1921/20192606/85459/Winter-associations-predict-social-and-extra-pair)}

Mallards

Mallards form heterosexual pairs only until the female lays eggs, at which point the male leaves the female. Mallards have an unusually high rate of male-male sexual behavior for birds; in some populations, this can affect up to 19 percent of pairs.

^{(Bagemihl, Bruce: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin’s Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-312-25377-6)}