Hermaphroditism , the condition of having both male and female reproductive organs. Hermaphroditic plants —most flowering plants, or angiosperms —are called monoecious, or bisexual. Hermaphroditic animals—mostly invertebrates such as worms , bryozoans moss animals , trematodes flukes , snails , slugs , and barnacles —are usually parasitic, slow-moving, or permanently attached to another animal or plant. In humans, conditions that involve discrepancies between external genitalia and internal reproductive organs are described by the term intersex. Intersex conditions are sometimes also referred to as disorders of sexual development DSDs. Such conditions are extremely rare in humans. In true gonadal intersex or true hermaphroditism , an individual has both ovarian and testicular tissue.

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WHEN Cody was born intersex, her parents and doctors made a decision. She still wonders if it was the right one. A decade ago, when a baby was born with both male and female physical characteristics, doctors and parents faced a difficult choice. Now, things are changing.
Ambiguous genitalia is a rare condition in which an infant's external genitals don't appear to be clearly either male or female. In a baby with ambiguous genitalia, the genitals may be incompletely developed or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes. The external sex organs may not match the internal sex organs or genetic sex.
For example, the great majority of tunicates , pulmonate snails, opisthobranch snails , earthworms , and slugs are hermaphrodites. Hermaphroditism is also found in some fish species and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates. Most plants are also hermaphrodites. Historically, the term hermaphrodite has also been used to describe ambiguous genitalia and gonadal mosaicism in individuals of gonochoristic species, especially human beings. The word intersex has come into usage for humans, since the word hermaphrodite is considered to be misleading and stigmatizing, [3] [4] as well as "scientifically specious and clinically problematic. A rough estimate of the number of hermaphroditic animal species is 65, Although the current estimated total number of animal species is about 7. Most hermaphroditic species exhibit some degree of self-fertilization.