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

Posted by timothy on from the fish-nor-fowl-except-fowl dept.

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.

1 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. About one in every 10,000 chickens is gynandromorp by kimvette · · Score: 4, Interesting

    About one in every 10,000 chickens is gynandromorphous, to use the technical term.

    That's somewhat close to the rate of intersex conditions in mammals, including humans.

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