Today I was learning about sexual reproduction in science class, and I am wondering if it might be possible for 3 or more parents to produce offspring. I know there are no organisms that can do this, or atleast that i know of.

If it did work i think instead of having a pair of 2 chromosomes, the organism could have groups of 3 so if an organsim has a diploid number of 42 chromosomes it would get 14 chromosomes from each of the three parents instead of the normal 21 chromosomes from each of the 2 parents. instead of XX being female and XY being male, there would be XXX as female XYY as male and the third sex which could possibly look like something inbetween female and male would be XXY. there would still be an equall chance for an offspring to become either of the three sexes, and still no chance off an offspring ending up with YYY.

As far as mating goes the male would mate with the third sex. The sperm would go inside of the third sex some how, where a different kind of reproductive cell would fuse with them. Then the third sex would mate with the female and send the preveiously combined sex cells into the female were they would fuse with the egg to form a zygote made from 3 different sex cells, to eventually develope into a baby.

The problem with this could be that the animals might not know enough to mate in that order. however this might help cause less sameness in offspring which is the maine point of sexual reproduction.

does anyone else think this may be a practicle method of reproduction?