Sex & Gender Determination: Quick site review

[Sean Nash]

Use this forum to share a website you found particularly interesting or informative on the topic of sex & gender determination. After surveying the site, and seeing what it has to offer, come back into the forum, link to the site, and describe what the reader/viewer can expect to find there. I'm guessing that all searches from school should be smart with the word "sex" (unfortunately) since that word is so often pulled out by web filtering software. Unfortunately, even our very liberal filtering policies here tend to squeeze biology content a little bit from time to time.

Vary search terms to find unique sites, and remember: you cannot re-post one that has appeared before you in the thread. Try to mix & match: "gender", "sex", "determination" "genetic", "genetics", "gamete", gametes", etc.

Be sure to be as discriminating as possible when evaluating sites. For example, this site is one of the top returns in Google when entering the following simple search: "gender determination". Do you think the information on this site is based more on science, or folklore? This exercise will certainly be more challenging than the last two, considering those topic are rarely ever addressed outside of scientific circles. Put more simply: you're going to have to get past the first page of results from an open search engine.

Also, keep in mind that this prompt doesn't necessarily confine you to sex determination in humans, does it? It would also be interesting to see how this may vary among differing groups of animals.

When you post... if it is a simple link to a site, post that link and also perhaps links to other pages within that you would like to direct your classmates to. If you have a really nice piece of video that you can embed directly into the discussion, do that here as well.

Be sure to tell us: why you chose the site. Why did this one stick out to you? Why does it do a good job of teaching the processes involved with sex determination? What is a criticism of the site if any? Is there something that could be added to make it perfect? What is the main thing you learned already from your brief review of this website? Since we need to look over all of these sites and provides comments, we won't have time to explore each site as deeply as you did. So- direct us specifically to what you determine to be the "good stuff."

[kristen sheehan]

This website is hilarious!! I have a 52% chance of having a boy. I hope that no one believes this stuff! It's not based on those dumb questions, it's based on way more!

[Rachel Huntsman]

The first website was really interesting. It's amazing to think that people really believe these things will determine the gender of a baby. The second was informative and can be understood well.

[Erin McAndrews]

Wowww, I wonder how someone came up with the idea if you hold a mug by the handle that you're having a boy? Haha. That was a hillarious website!

[Taylor Snider]

This website was pretty interesting. It mostly talked about how gender is determined between reptiles, but it mentions humans too. I chose this site because it looks official with the Department of Energy logo. It talked about how a 14 year old asked about hermaphrodite animals and how gender is determined. It does a good job because the writer uses information from other scientific articles including his own knowledge.

[Samantha Wilson]

This site


goes into detail about meiosis 1 and 2. It just refreshes my memory on what we have already learned. It as well breaks down gene information and makes it easier to comprehend. It talks about when meiosis messes up, and what abnormalities will come from it. To me it is interesting knowing what could happen when things don't go as perfect as planned.

[Lacie Thompson]

I chose this website because it was a little more in depth with some creativity.It showed many different examples and helped me understand and comprehend better.

[Skylar N. Womach]

this website is somewhat lengthy but there are several parts of it that explain how the sex of organisms is determined. Especially at the beginning when it talks about the sex chromosomes of males and females

[MIchelle]

I chose this site, because it had some actually funny information. There is such a myth that a male has one "female testicle" and one "male testicle", there for if the sperm comes from one, then he has a son, and the other he has a female. This is completely false because the only evidence is one case, with mumps. But what isn't taken into consideration is that mumps affect both testicles.

This site also states that the father of the child is basically the determinant of the child's gender. The mother can only give and X so it is up to the father to decide the other Chromosome.