Half-Male, Half-Female Fowl Explain Birds' Sex Determination

Kanan excerpts from a BBC report out of Scotland: "A study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals. Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones." Kanan also supplies this link to some pictures of the mixed-cell birds.

Comments

Interesting

[interkin3tic]

So would one of these hermaphrodite chickens be called a half-cock?

I agree with the section "Clucking confusing."

Re:Interesting

[RCGodward]

I think this story is for the birds... I'm sorry...

Re:Interesting

[c 0xFF]

If two sexually scrambled chickens get together, will one lay scrambled eggs?

Re:Interesting

[ArcherB]

Since this seems to be the "joke" thread, allow me to put in my $0.02

I was on a farm doing research on genetic engineering and kept seeing something zip around at amazing speeds. I asked the farmer what it was and he told me it was chickens.

"See," he said, "the drumstick is everyone's favorite part of the chicken. So we engineered chickens with three legs. For every two chickens we sell, it's like we are selling three, leg-wise. It actually reduces waste since the factories don't find themselves with extra breasts and other crappy parts that they have to throw away or turn into chicken nuggets."

I said, "WOW!!!! That's amazing. How do they taste?"

He replied, "Hell if I know. We haven't been able to catch one yet!"

________________________________________________________

Please, tip your waitress.

Object-sex-oriented?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

So each cell has it's own this.getSexualOrientation() function.

Whereas mammals have a global static variable where SEXUAL_ORIENTATION = MALE or FEMALE.

This is interesting because I thought we all inherited from a common ancestor. Was sexual orientation not defined in the root class?

Re:Object-sex-oriented?

[FlyingBishop]

In both cases, each cell has its own this.getGender() function.

In both cases, I would imagine the code looks something like this:

class cell {
      int gender; // should really be a bool, need to fix that at some point.
      proteinFactoryBuilder asdf; // find a better naming scheme ... ...

      getGender() { /* I don't really have time to go back and fix this right now, but if I'd known I'd be making multicellular organisms with this shit I wouldn't have put this at the cellular level. Anyway, we're stuck with it, so for now I'm just returning the gender variable and I'll leave it to callers to figure out wtf to do with unexpected output. */
          return gender;
      }
}

Small wonder it's a little more confusing for birds.

Re:Object-sex-oriented?

[GodfatherofSoul]

First-year computer science students rejoice! God doesn't know how to do OOD either!

Re:Object-sex-oriented?

[Chris Burke]

Don't be silly.

Sex is what you want but can never get enough of.

Gender identity is what lets you pick out cross-dressers and transvestites.

Sexual orientation is how you're oriented during sex, i.e. missionary, doggy style, reverse cowgirl, Saskatchewan Swinging Simian power retrograde style, etc.

Re:Object-sex-oriented?

[Hurricane78]

So each cell has it's own this.getSexualOrientation() function.

That’s Java right? Then, wouldn’t that be this.getFactoryFactory().getOrientationDeterminationFactory(this.getFactoryFactory().OrientationDeterminator.SEXUAL).getSexualOrientationDeterminator().execute()?

n00bs

[DriedClexler]

They're not the first ones to be checking out a nice-lookin' bird and then see from another angle that "she" is really a man.

Hurray!

[clone53421]

Now we can produce twice as many chicken breasts.

I suppose we’d better not be going off half-cocked, though. More grant money!

Dinosaur extinction

[billstewart]

Are you suggesting that the Gay Agenda was what wiped out the dinosaurs?

I suspect the real events that affected their reproduction involved Mass Quantities of Death, and the difficulty in getting Zombie Dinosaurs to reproduce.