CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -The temperature of the developing eggs is what decides whether the offspring will be male or female. This is called temperature-dependent sex determination, or TSD.

Detailed explanation-2: -Unlike humans, turtles and other reptiles like crocodiles who lay their eggs do not have sex chromosomes. In sea turtles, sex is determined by the nest’s environment: warmer temperatures produce females and cooler temperatures produce males.

Detailed explanation-3: -Recent studies (Bergeron et al. 1994, 1999) have shown that polychlorinated biphenyl compounds (PCBs), a class of widespread pollutants that can act like estrogens, are able to reverse the sex of turtles raised at “male” temperatures.

Detailed explanation-4: -The most common way to determine gender in a turtle is to look at the length of its tail. 3 Female turtles have short and skinny tails while males sport long, thick tails, with their vent (cloaca) positioned closer to the end of the tail when compared to a female.