High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The XY sex-determination system is the sex-determination system found in humans, most other mammals, some insects (Drosophila) and some plants (Ginkgo). In this system, females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex. However, an opposite scheme is found in birds. The XY sex determination system was first described independently by Nettie Stevens and Edmund Beecher Wilson in 1905.