The Most Controversial Part of Jurassic Park Explained!

The notion of a dinosaur sex change is one of the central mysteries of Jurassic Park. Does life really find a way?

“I’m simply saying that life, uh, finds a way.”

• Dr. Ian Malcolm, master of understatement

Oh those silly humans in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies. When will they ever learn? You’d think that maybe after the events of the first film they might take a breather on trying to mess with nature, or at least with dinosaurs specifically, but nope! But if they did, we wouldn’t have all these fun movies where said humans get their just desserts as, um, dessert for all manner of resurrected dinosaurs.

The quality of the assorted sequels in the Jurassic Park franchise are a mixed bag, but the original 1993 film? That one is a pretty unassailable summer movie classic, and it’s the one that we’re focusing on for this week’s episode. Specifically, we’re diving in to the question of how the dinosaurs, engineered to only be female, changed their sex to male in order to breed and thus create an entire host of new problems for the unwitting scientists. 

We also, as you might expect, take a look at the “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” of it all. Get your running shoes on (how does that old saying go? “I don’t have to outrun the velociraptor, I only have to outrun you?”) for the latest episode of Does it Fly? right here…

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SUGGESTED VIEWING 

We’re only really discussing the first Jurassic Park movie in this episode, so that makes it easy on you. But the franchise now encompasses both movies and TV shows, and they aren’t all handily numbered like some sequels are, so here’s a quick guide to the order they all take place in, for those viewing order chronology obsessives out there!

Jurassic Park (movie)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (movie)

Jurassic Park III (movie)

Jurassic World (movie)

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (Netflix animated TV series…and a really good one, too!)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (movie)

Battle at Big Rock (short film)

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (Netflix animated TV series…also quite good!)

Jurassic World Dominion (movie)

Jurassic World Rebirth (movie)

FURTHER READING 

Do you want to delve a little deeper into the facts, concepts, and stories Hakeem and Tamara referenced in today’s episode? Of course you do! 

Read the books!

The first movie in the franchise is based on Michael Crichton’s bestselling 1983 novel of the same name. He wrote its sequel, The Lost World, at the behest of Steven Spielberg, who wanted to make another Jurassic Park movie, and Crichton decided he would like the equivalent weight of a brontosaurus in cash.

Dinosaur birds?

The ancient bird-like dinosaur that Hakeem is referring to is the archaeopteryx, which is kind of the link between modern birds and dinosaurs, but read more here to get a better sense of this distinction.

They can do WHAT?!?

For a brief list of animals (no mammals can do this on their own!) that can change their sex when needed, we direct you here. Frogs, of course, are the most relevant specifically to Jurassic Park and our discussion today, but according to Hakeem, if you wanted to be more scientifically accurate, pay more attention to the birds and reptiles on this list!

Mutation as Stress Response

Sadly, humans can’t do this RIGHT NOW but there’s plenty of scientific precedent for it.

A Brief History of the End Times (for certain creatures)

Some light and fluffy reading for you, an overview of extinction level events in history!

WANT MORE FROM DOES IT FLY?

The new How to Train Your Dragon is currently in theaters and we took a look at the evolutionary possibilities of dragons right here. Dragons are kind of like dinosaurs, right?

Speaking of new releases in theaters, M3GAN 2.0 is now playing, and we looked at the scientific and philosophical implications of the first film right here.

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