Frogs turning.gay

A barrage of studies on such endocrine disruption have followed—some confirming that amphibians such as frogs are suffering from an atrazine onslaught, others finding no effect, and some even finding evidence of reduced sperm count in men from agricultural regions of the U.

This study is not likely to be the last word in the controversy, however. If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. All that atrazine may be having another effect: turning male frogs female.

{INSERTKEYS} [1]. Discover the real science behind Alex Jones’ gay frogs claim, Atrazine’s effects on frogs, and how to support true amphibian conservation. The key may be aromatase, a protein that spurs the production of the female hormone estrogen, causing originally male gonads to become ovaries and whose production is spurred by atrazine.

And Rohr's research has found that atrazine could exert indirect effects : At levels found in water throughout the U. Herbicides like atrazine are now found in 57 percent of U. Geological Survey. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

So this is not just a frog problem. Berkeley, rather than an unaffiliated scientific reviewer as is more common. For his part, Kloas in the past reviewed atrazine's effects for Syngenta and found no impact on African clawed frogs at up to micrograms per liter of atrazine and no genetic impact at 25 micrograms per liter.

One of the mostly widely used weed killers, atrazine, may be disrupting male frogs' sexual development--even reversing it. {/INSERTKEYS}

Atrazine induces complete feminization : The blatant absurdity of this conspiracy theory makes it one of the most widely mocked and memed of Jones’ outbursts (though one study

The EPA, for its part, announced yet another review of the frog turning.gay last October because of human health concerns, after declaring the chemical treatment safe in Ultimately, atrazine may be silencing the amphibian calls of the wild: "It leads to them not croaking," Hayes says, noting that atrazine may be contributing to the global decline in amphibians, along with chytrid fungus.

Whereas another four of the treated frogs apparently resisted atrazine's effects, the rest "lacked male reproductive behavior, had reduced male features, and severely reduced sperm and low fertility," Hayes says. The bountiful fields of the U.

Some 36 million kilograms of the odorless, white powder are applied on farms to control grassy weeds. Hayes has a long history studying atrazinestarting in the s with research funded by its maker, now known as Syngenta, that first raised the prospect that the herbicide might be a interfering with the natural hormones of animals, including humans.

The claim was popularized by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who cited studies on the herbicide atrazine, known to induce spontaneous sex reversal or hermaphroditism in certain frog species, to assert that the U.S. government was "putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay" as part of a "chemical warfare operation".

As a result, 30 of the frogs were chemically castrated, incapable of reproducing, among other impacts. The herbicide atrazine, one of the world's most widely used pesticides, screws up the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by UC Berkeley's Tyrone Hayes.

He also questions the single exposure level, lack of measurement of female hormone levels in the affected frogs, and the use of ethanol in the water solution "as they claim atrazine is easily water soluble and it is better to avoid any solvent if feasible.

Critics, such as biologist Werner Kloas of Humboldt University in Berlin, charge that samples may have been contaminated by endocrine disruptors like bisphenol A BPA leaching from plastic containers or introduced during screening. He says he currently has "no running frog turning.gay with Syngenta or any further chemical company.

Somekilograms of the herbicide fall with the rain each year, sometimes up to 1, kilometers from the source. And four of the treated frogs actually turned female, going so far as to mate with other males and produce viable eggs despite being genetically male.

Plus, the researchers used frogs bearing only the ZZ sex chromosomes of male African clawed frogs. In previous studies "if we got hermaphrodites, there was no way to know if they were males with ovaries or females with testes," Hayes says.

By David Biello.