We are not green worms

In the green cape worms, the animals on the bottom of the sea, the size differences between males and females are among the largest known: the female is 200 thousand times larger than the male. He is inside her genitals all his life and fertilizes eggs by ejecting sperm from his mouth.

Olivia Judson New York Times, Haaretz, News and Walla!

Hypothesis: It is impossible to differentiate between males and females based on their behavior and intellectual skills. This is not true for elephants. Females have a large "vocabulary" and live in herds; Males tend to live in solitude, and if they speak at all - their conversation is limited. The hypothesis is also not true for zebra finches, in which the males sing complex songs, while the females cannot sing at all.

In the green cape worms, the animals on the bottom of the sea, the size differences between males and females are among the largest known: the female is 200 thousand times larger than the male. He is inside her genitals all his life and fertilizes eggs by ejecting sperm from his mouth.

Is it ridiculous to assume that this hypothesis can be wrong in relation to humans? No. But this is not a fashionable assumption, as Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, discovered when he recently suggested that the greater representation of men at the top of mathematics and science may be the result of innate ability.

The belief that men are more talented for genetic reasons created a system of discrimination, and in the end turned out to be complete nonsense. Studies have shown that women are more likely to receive grants for science studies, when the examiners do not know the gender of the applicant. The same goes for orchestra exams.

Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that we cannot even raise the question. The differences between the species are fascinating, and unlike other biological differences between animal species.

The miraculous differences between the male and female green palm worms are not related to the different genes they have: each larva of such a worm can turn into either a male or a female. His gender will be determined according to the answer to the question, if he meets a female in the first three weeks of his life. If so, he will become male.

Why do gender differences even appear? They appear when the secret of success is different for males and females: the more different the ways to success, the more extreme the physiological differences.

By studying the differences and similarities between men and women you can learn about the forces that shaped us in the past; And I think the news is good. We are not like green tapeworms, in which males and females are so different that aspiring to an equal society would be ridiculous. With us, when there are intellectual differences, they are tiny.

The interesting questions are, if there is an average congenital difference, and how extensive is the variation. I would be happy to know if the averages are the same but the underlying variation is different - when members of one gender tend to be exceptional or extremely bad at certain types of thinking, while members of the other gender are good, but rarely exceptional.

Such a conclusion could be revealed even if the forces shaping men and women were the same. In certain animals - humans and fruit flies for example - males have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. In females, therefore, the extreme effects of genes on one X chromosome can be offset by the genes on the other chromosome. But with males there is no way to hide your X. In flowers and butterflies the situation is the opposite: females have a Z chromosome and a W chromosome, while males have two Z's.

The science of sex differences, even in fruit flies and toads, is a complex subject. It is also a highly charged topic, given its poor history. In fact, not long ago I would have balked at this whole operation: the idea that there could be cognitive differences between men and women seems insulting to me. But science has great persuasive power. The worms forced me to change my mind. Now I'm eager to know what differentiates men from women, and I'm no longer afraid of what we might discover.

The author is an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London

Courtesy of Walla news