But after seeing mobile phone pictures, he suspected it had what is called bilateral gynandromorphism, which is when a bird would have both a functioning ovary and a functioning single testis."
So, uh, it would have been interesting if they had mentioned WHY the ornithologist thought it was gynandromorphic rather than leucistic? I'm not an ornithologist but it seems like a pigment mutation is a simpler explanation...
I note that birds use the WZ sex system, which is like the opposite of the mammalian XY sex system. Males are ZZ. Selective silencing of genes on the Z chromosome for dosage compensation could cause spacial variation across the body. We see something like this in the XY sex system with Barr bodies, leading to coloration differences such as those of the calico cat.
It's also possible to have a plain old male-male chimera, or a plain old mutation, with the cells in one part failing to produce the proper color.
Maybe it's me getting old, but it's nice to see things like that every now and then.
I also love goldfinches. I had a bird feeder that only they can eat from and had so much fun watching them. Plus it made it so I can instantly recognize their calls.
And the tufted titmouse is the cutest regular I see.
I had a very bland back yard (green ivies as walls, some other evergreen ground covering), but my girlfriend moved in two years ago and she's a gardener. We've got a diversity of plants now, the soil is alive again, and there's a popular bird feeder, regularly refilled, hanging on the shed now. We sometimes get a dozen birds flitting about there, who then get interrupted by a pair of magpies.
But, this whole neighbourhood I live in (very middle class, I'm at the outer edge) has been designed to allow for nature, with lots of semi-wild green spaces dotted around and lots of waterways.
Technology is so good that even entry level cameras have sensors that put professional camera sensors from fifteen years ago to shame. It's easy to feel like we are drowning in lazy photography, but the same technology makes things like this possible.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanbatley/
As opposed to my setting up a GoPro on my moms feeder. Which is fun but not quite the same (she has a normal male cardinal)
Also, is this just a specific type of genetic mosaicism? I've heard of humans with mosaic DNA (sometimes showing up as patches of alternative skin/hair coloration, etc.); but for some reason I've never heard of humans with mosaic DNA of two different chromosomal sexes.
While I was volunteering in a support group for transgender people, I once spoke to a woman who had a lot of complex issues with her hormone replacement therapy.
She was on a mix of medication that I had never seen before and I got worried that her health provider was prescribing an incorrect treatment.
This got me to ask questions I would never ask usually out of worry.
She told me that the reason that her medication was not the usual treatment is that she had a condition in which different parts of her bodies had different chromosomes. She told the exact name of the condition at the time but I did not write it down. I do remember the word "chimerism" being said during this conversation.
From experience, stories about weird conditions said by trans people are almost always true. She seemed very sincere about her struggles.
Tons of different human mosaics have been observed but it usually doesn't cause anything interesting.
Having different hair would imply chimerism - having two different sets of DNA. With mosaicism you start from one set of DNA but it may not duplicate the usual way.
From the wiki for mosaic DNA:
> In rare cases, intersex conditions can be caused by mosaicism where some cells in the body have XX and others XY chromosomes (46, XX/XY).[12][13] In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, where a fly possessing two X chromosomes is a female and a fly possessing a single X chromosome is a sterile male, a loss of an X chromosome early in embryonic development can result in sexual mosaics, or gynandromorphs.
> An example of this is one of the milder forms of Klinefelter syndrome, called 46,XY/47,XXY mosaic wherein some of the patient's cells contain XY chromosomes, and some contain XXY chromosomes.
So yes. Looks like it occurs in humans enough to be a big area of study for intersex understanding. There’s a lot of research on sex in this area, but it’s hard to dig through. (And a recommendation for the game “House of Fata Morgana” if you’d like a fictional telling of this history).
Not exactly. Intersex only refers to hermaphroditism in humans, mainly for political reasons. In all other species, its still called hermaphroditism.
From an article linked in another comment: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/science/cardinal-sex-gend...
I'm originally from that part of the country, and I swear my mom sends me a story like this every couple of years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/science/cardinal-sex-gend...
Half white, half colored https://www.wtxl.com/news/local-news/water-cooler/northern-c...
really interesting!
I'm not sure whether or not they are migratory.
N.b. that bisexual chmærism happens all the time, but tends to go unnoticed so long as both gonads belong to the same sex, which is typically the case, as they are organs located close together.
What triggers this is that both gonads belong to different strata of the chimæra, and that thus one develops into male gonads, and the other into female gonads.
One's entire body can belong to a female stratum in the chimæra, but so long as only the tissue that forms the gonads belongs to a male stratum, they will develop into testes, and influence the entire female stratum to also develop masculine characteristics, as male and female cells are not differently receptive to sex hormones.
[1] https://www.axios.com/falling-sperm-count-endocrine-disrupti...
[1] https://www.axios.com/falling-sperm-count-endocrine-disrupti...
1. check 2. 13-page report published in 2017 without follow up turned into a book released yesterday 3. axios "Between the Lines" (https://www.axios.com/about/) just because i like and/or agree with axios does not let them off the hook on #3
All I remember about this poster which I had forgotten about until now is the state bird, cardinal. I think it is also the only red bird of this size?
(Alba is a heart-warming, pro-nature and fun Apple arcade game.)
