Why Don't More Animals Change Their Sex?

Most animals, like humans, have separate sexes -- they are born, live out their lives and reproduce as one sex or the other. However, some animals live as one sex in part of their lifetime and then switch to the other sex, a phenomenon called sequential hermaphroditism. What remains a puzzle is why the phenomenon is so rare, since a detailed analysis shows the biological "costs" of changing sexes rarely outweigh the advantages.

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