Half male, half female bird

[Zara]

Very interesting!

Birder snaps rare 'half-female, half-male' bird - BBC News

Jamie Hill said taking the stunning photos of the northern cardinal was "once in a lifetime".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[faislaq]

How beautiful and special!

 

[BirdWorld]

Wow! So interesting.

 

[jh81]

Its like me!

 

[Destiny]

It can happen to parakeets too.



This one is all male, but color-split.

 

[BirdWorld]

It can happen to parakeets too.

View attachment 374635

This one is all male, but color-split.

That's what I thought of when I saw the photos too. From what I can tell it occurs by chance when "twin" budgies fuse inside the egg. So presumably if there is one of each gender you'd get something like the cardinal.

 

[Tazlima]

That's what I thought of when I saw the photos too. From what I can tell it occurs by chance when "twin" budgies fuse inside the egg. So presumably if there is one of each gender you'd get something like the cardinal.

Makes you wonder how often this happens, only the two halves happen to look alike, so nobody notices.

 

[Destiny]

It makes me curious if hens that lay double-yolked eggs are more likely to hatch out half-sider chicks. The fusion of zygotes that creates this type of chimera happens before the shell is formed, so perhaps not, but in order for two zygotes to be present, the female must have released an extra gamete, so perhaps it is a valid indicator.

Interestingly, this condition is not inheritable. Some half-siders are infertile - especially if the two sides are different genders. But if they are able to reproduce, the offspring will be normal with the same chance of producing another half-sider as any other breeding.

Half-siders are basically the true opposite of identical twins - instead of one zygote splitting into two identical babies, two zygotes fuse into a single baby, split down the middle genetically.

 

[BirdWorld]

It makes me curious if hens that lay double-yolked eggs are more likely to hatch out half-sider chicks.

That'd be interesting; when my hens were younger (their egg laying has started to slow down) they did at one point lay only double yolked eggs with a few sparse normal ones. It was quite interesting really. If they were fertile I would have gotten a whole lot of chicks

 

[BirdWorld]

Makes you wonder how often this happens, only the two halves happen to look alike, so nobody notices.

Exactly, maybe there's a half sided raven or chickadee in my yard and I never knew!

 

[Azor]

If i remember correctly this bird will have the genom of two different birds and in theory is its own brother/sister .