The barnacle’s rapid evolution from one reproductive system to another reveals the surprising flexibility of sex and its expression in nature. Darwin clearly recognized this – he was way ahead of his time. Which is why it is a shame he chose to exclude his beloved barnacles from his musings on the manifestation of sex. They might have prevented him from presenting sex in such a dichotomous and deterministic fashion. Today barnacles, and creatures like them, are at the forefront of teaching us how sex is no static binary, but a fluid phenomenon, with fuzzy borders that can bend to evolution’s
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