In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the female or male. For example, the great majority of tunicates, pulmonate molluscs, opisthobranch, 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. Animal species having different sexes, male and female, are called gonochoric, which is the opposite of hermaphrodite.There are also species where hermaphrodites exist alongside males (called androdioecy) or alongside females (called gynodioecy), or all three exist in the same  species (called trioecy); these three systems are sometimes called mixed breeding systems. In plants there are cases where male flowers and hermaphrodite flowers occur on the same plant (andromonoecy) or female flowers and hermaphrodite flowers on the same plant (gynomonoecy).The term hermaphrodite is commonly used for abnormal cases of dioecious animal species but according to geneticist Michael Majerus this definition should be distinguished from the scientific definition.In recent years the term hermaphrodite applied to humans has fallen out of favor since there have been no identified cases of a human reproducing as both male and female, with some biologists saying hermaphroditism does not occur in humans.
Another common cause of being intersex is the crossing over of the testis-determining factor (SRY) from the Y chromosome to the X chromosome during meiosis. The SRY is then activated in only certain areas, causing development of testes in some areas by beginning a series of events starting with the upregulation of the transcription factor (SOX9), and in other areas not being active (causing the growth of ovarian tissues). Thus, testicular and ovarian tissues will both be present in the same individual.Fetuses before sexual differentiation are sometimes described as female by doctors explaining the process. This is not technically true. Before this stage, humans are simply undifferentiated and possess a paramesonephric duct, a mesonephric duct, and a genital tubercle. Evolution
The evolution of anisogamy may have contributed to the evolution of simultaneous hermaphroditism and sequential hermaphroditism but, as of 2016 it remains unclear if the evolution of anisogamy first led to hermaphroditism or gonochorism. : 213  It is possible that hermaphroditism evolved from gonochorism, or vice versa. Most studies on its evolution focus on plants, and its evolution in animals is unclear as of December 2017.Simultaneous hermaphroditism that exclusively reproduces through self-fertilization has evolved many times in plants and animals, but it might not last long evolutionarily. : 14

In animals
Joan Roughgarden and Priya Iyer argued that the last common ancestor for animals was hermaphroditic and that transitions from hermaphroditism to gonochorism were more numerous than the reverse.