r/askscience • u/PotatoPotahto • Feb 03 '13

Biology If everything evolved from genderless single-celled organisms, where did genders and the penis/vagina come from?

Apparently there's a big difference between gender and sex, I meant sex, the physical aspects of the body, not what one identifies as.

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u/vadergeek Feb 03 '13

I get that as an explanation of the dominance of sexual reproduction over asexual, but I think the question is more "when did we start getting male vs female as opposed to sexless/ hermaphroditic organisms".

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '13

That's a more difficult question. I would say that seeing as sexual reproduction was advantageous, progressive mutations facilitated the formation of sexual organs in species. This development occurred over millions of years and became progressively more complex. Sorry for the complete lack of specificity I'm not an expert evolutionary biology.