In most baby turtles you can't tell if it's male or female so how was Splinter sure (since he named them)?
In most baby turtles you can't tell if it's male or female so how was Splinter sure (since he named them)?
While that's possible, remember: Normal turtles have virtually no secondary sexual characteristics. If a female mutant turtle mutated under the same circumstances also has a deep voice, then it wouldn't say anything distinctive about their biological sexes, but then those females could be mistaken for male to an unknowledgeable observer. And, as we said before, Splinter may be smart and well-educated, but it's still a situation he had never been in.
You know, this is fun. It's like a logic puzzle. Anyone have more theories to test?
Mmmh, maybe he recognized by the scent? Or by the energy of their auras.
Some turtles do have secondary sexual characteristics actually. Some have it where the females are larger, others have it where the males have longer tails and some have it that males have longer front claws. But you could also use the genitals to tell whether something is a male or a female. That's how you sex a snake. But with a snake you have to use a probe in the cloaca.
So far, Sugilita's last answer about aura energy seems the most credible when it comes to Splinter, and has the benefit of being far less ambiguous than visually inspecting the anatomy of unfamiliar mutants.
At least for some versions of the Turtles, it could all still be moot. Some may have had trivial human-like anatomy and secondary sexual characters. And the Rise Turtles actually all wearing boxer briefs makes it easy to imagine they have something to conceal.
This makes me think of another concept I once ridiculed: Turtles with facial hair. Maybe it's not all that far-fetched after all.
But you think that if they could grow full beards or maintain five o'clock shadows as adults, that they'd already possibly be starting to get their first whiskers as teenagers. Though the onset even in real people can be fickle, as it's perfectly possible to have no whiskers at 15, and start to really get them at 16 or 17.
I think we should just assume Splinter DIDN'T do that to his sons just to find out what they were.
Well, Splinter-starting-as-a-basic-brown-rat kind of requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, when you consider things like the rat's intellectual capacity (which is bright, but not bright enough to learn Japanese culture, ninjutsu, the ability to read, etc) and its lifespan (he should have been dead several times over by the time he was mutated).
I think its the only logical way to figure out their gender.