Male fish producing eggs?

[screembloodymurder]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501384.html

The oak tree in my yard is producing more acorns this year than it has in the past 5 years combined and many times more than I've seen in the 40 years I've been here. The pines are loaded with cones too. The insects seem more numerous this year and now this bizarre story about the fish. Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something?

Why this sudden urgency to reproduce? Is this a natural response to a changing climate? When species are threatened by climate change, do they produce more offspring in an effort to combat their own demise? It seems logical to me that climate stress could produce this effect.

Any biologist out there?

[darkmaestro019]

1. I'm no biologist

but I read a lot of science and that sounds quite logical to me. Someone might argue about "anecdotal" to you, though, but I hate that. That's just a way to try to pssh-dismiss what people are staring directly at with their own two eyes.

We are animals too--I can just FEEL that it's just not right. Can't you?

[soothsayer]

2. Probably just the homosexual agenda at work, lol!

As for your acorns---doesn't that mean a hard winter?

[screembloodymurder]

3. I've heard that and if it's true, we're in for a doozy.

I'm raking up acorns like leaves and the squirrels are so big they're picking on my pit bull.

[thegreatwildebeest]

4. Unfortunatly...

The problem with male fish becoming feminized has to do with a by-product of the contraceptive pill which is not filtered out of most, if any water systems. Of course this will be taken out of context or mis-used by conservative folks to decry another malady of the pill. The reality is, though this is a problem (and it does need to be rectified), the decrease in birth rates of humans and the general control of reproduction that comes with the use of the pill, far outweighs the downsides.

[MountainLaurel]

5. In this case it's not the Pill

Causing the problem, it's the hormones that are fed to chickens on industrial farms in the mountains where the headwaters of the Potomac lie.