Do animals go through gender development?

Question: Do animals go through gender development?
- Keywords:
  gender,
  reproduction
Asked by mcmanus94 to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 11 Jun 2012.
- Kevin Mahon answered on 11 Jun 2012:
  
  They most certainly do! We’re animals and we go though gender development! Most animals go through a phase of sexual maturity and become morphologically different to some extent (getting bigger is the most obvious development).
  
  An offshoot of this is sexual dimorphism – where as they mature different sexes of the same species gain gender specific traits. This is ties into competition for mating, so we generally end up with ‘high end’ individuals having very highly developed gender specific traits.
  
  This is why we have male deer with large antlers, male peacocks with overly fancy plumage and species where one gender is bigger than the other (Black Myotis bats have females substantially larger than the males).
- Valeria Senigaglia answered on 11 Jun 2012:
  
  Hey mcmanus94,
  do you know that some animals also become males or females depending on the temperature.
  Sea turtle for example lay eggs in a hole that they dig into beaches and if the eggs are deeper (where is cooler) they become females while if the eggs develop in a warm environment, they become males.
  Pretty cool eh?!
- Joanna Cruden answered on 22 Jun 2012:
  
  If there is not enough of one sex some animals can change from female to male and visa versa!

Question: Do animals go through gender development?