Opposites Attract!

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

 

Have you ever wondered why there are two genders: Male and Female? 

There could have been only one, and everyone could have just passed on their genes directly to the next generation; things would have been much simpler. Or there could have been three, with the same kind of forces playing between them in pairs, as in between male and female. Or there could have been four, or five, and so on. 

Yet there are only two sexes in all animals. Even plants. Even bacteria! Why did nature choose only two? What’s up with the number two? 

This question has baffled me for many years. And other than the existence of some mysterious symmetry I could never find any explanation for this. 

And so the question remained for many years, the continuum of confusion broken somewhere by a sudden insight into knowledge in the middle of some dream, which faded away in the morning and I collapsed back into confusion. I knew I had the answer, I just was not able to find it. 

Since this is a biological question, it is more likely to be answered by the theory of Evolution. All biological beings have evolved to the present state because the present state has offered them some advantage in terms of growth, survival and competition. But what is the advantage of having two genders? 

Could it be genetic mixing? Genetic mixing is very useful for evolution, since it creates new kinds of gene combinations that can be tested to perform under the changing conditions.  But genetic mixing could have happened even if there were three genders. That is true. However, if the process of reproduction would have required three people, the probability of three willing candidates coming together would have fallen rapidly, therefore reducing the growth rate. But what if the process required only two, but these pairs could be formed in three ways? That sounds pretty logical... 

The problem here is that reproduction is actually quite big a deal, it consists of so many complex processes like pass on the information, make the child and keep him somewhere safe while you do that, take care of the baby’s health and nourishment, help him/her to grow and learn, and many other cares. A single person can do all this, but then there would be no genetic mixing, in which case if this person does not have the faculty to, we could say, survive a storm, both the person and his baby would die. So what we need here is some sort of collaboration with another person who has that faculty to survive the storm. That person who can survive the storm would also be willing to collaborate with this person because he/she might have got some other quality like, say, survive the heat. By sharing their qualities, they can potentially create a baby that can survive both the storm as well as the heat. It is possible that the future would consist of only the storm, or only the heat, but since you do not know the future, you have to gamble. That is how mating arose. 

In that case there could be just one gender and people could mate with whomever they chose. However, if you have to gamble anyway, collaborating on just one issue is not a very good gamble. There got to be a handful of them, and since both of you are now investing in one project, the responsibility is fairly shared between the two of you. Sharing could have occurred by both of you taking turns to perform the same function, but it could also be that one person performs some of the function and the other does the others. The latter will increase the efficiency of the functions being performed because each of you will then acquire some degree of specialization in the functions you chose to perform, although it will make the gamble riskier. Millions of years ago, on the unstable, unpredictable Earth, the efficiency became the important factor since there were so many gambles anyway. 

In the course of time, this specialization increased to the extent of becoming encoded by the genes! All the complex physiological and psychological differences between male and female boils down to the asymmetric twenty-third pair of chromosome: the XX for female and XY for male. 

And thus arose the two genders. 

Polygamy or Polyandry could have probably arisen whenever one person of a particular gender could increase his/her efficiency multiple times and so could provide for multiple partners of the opposite gender. 

The problem with having three genders in which any two can form pairs is that it cannot happen for reasons of complementarity. If you have to form a pair anyway, you will have to share the chores equally, in which case having a third gender is not at all required. And if the chores were shared equally between three, any two forming a couple could never be capable of providing complete care. In that case collaboration between three persons will be required, which is first of all, as I have said earlier, difficult to attain (the probability of compatible three meeting each other would be so low), and then also difficult to sustain given the number of opposing views that will increase the fighting! 

According to scientists, all of this can be represented in terms of energy costs, although research is still on. 

So two it is, till date. And they continue to fight the temptations that biology conferred upon them to keep their genes afloat. But with the Earth’s changing geography, and the changing society, and the millions of years our sun will continue to burn, who knows the future?