And at least one species, the mangrove killifish, lives a fully hermaphroditic existence, self-fertilizing for their entire reproductive lives. Still others can switch back and forth depending on the circumstance, such as a variety of coral-dwelling gobies. Others, like the clownfish, do the opposite, from male to female. Some like the kobudai change routinely from female to male. The footage is remarkable – but the transformation is actually not terribly unusual. About two per cent of fish species display some kind of hermaphroditism: that’s 500 different species worldwide. Now even larger than the existing dominant male it had previously mated with when female, the new male defeats the aged alpha in a violent battle for dominance. After many months, the transformed male emerges from its lair larger than before, bearing testes, a huge bulbous forehead, and an aggressive nature. Millions of people saw a dramatic example of this in the first episode of Blue Planet II, in which a ten-year-old female kobudai (also known as an Asian sheepshead wrasse, Semicossyphus reticulatus) changes into a male.
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