14 DAY TRIAL // You know how some parents won't even let their kids pick what clothes they want to wear on the first day of school? Well, these parents might have a thing or two to learn from turtles.
Apparently, turtles’ parents are so lenient that they allow their offspring to choose whether they want to be boys or girls.
A team of researchers writing in the journal Biology Letters details how, when inside the egg, turtle embryos have the opportunity to move about and influence their development by toying with their own body temperature.
“Our results suggest that animals may actively select their own destiny even at the very early stage of embryos,” ecologist Wei-Guo Du says.
The specialists explain that, in the case of turtles, the temperatures the embryos are exposed to while still in their early stages of development are the ones to determine whether they will grow to be males or females.
More precisely, embryos developing in cooler temperatures are mainly males, and those developing in higher temperatures are more often than not females.