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🐸Today's Topic: Gay Frogs?!🐸

TL; DW (Too Long; Didn’t Watch)

The pesticide atrazine CAN turn male frogs into females that are able to mate and successfully reproduce.
Atrazine is a weed killer used primarily on corn crops.
Previously it was known that atrazine could cause sexual abnormalities in frogs, such as hermaphroditism.
Atrazine interferes with the sex hormone estrogen.
The study raised 40 little boy frog babies from egg to full sexual maturity in low levels of atrazine, similar to what they would find in nature. There was also a control group of 40 with no atrazine exposure.
The amount of atrazine found to produce this result (feminization in amphibians) was 0.1 parts per billion (ppb), 30 times LOWER a level than is allowed in our drinking water (3.0ppb) by the EPA.
This study used 2.5ppb, in a 3-year period, still lower than the allowed amount in drinking water.
All 40 little guys in the CONTROL group remained MALE.
10% of the atrazine group were COMPLETELY feminized, or turned female, and were able to mate AND produce (male) offspring.
10% of that group had NO noticeable effects.
Approximately 50% had SOME form of feminization taking place but were NOT completely female yet.
Some would have eggs in their testes, many had much lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen. And many starting acting like females.
Feminized frogs can (or so far have) only produce MALE eggs. This could be problematic… unless, of course, the new thing is for everyone to be born male and turn into females… 😲
There have been tests on 4 other continents on other species proving the problematic side effects of atrazine in the water supply.
Species so far tested and confirmed: rodents, birds, amphibians, and fish.