Unusual! They found a bird half male, half female

Both Shirley and Jeffrey Caldwell have discovered a strange animal in the bird feeder that they have in the patio of their home, Pennsylvania: a cardinal whose left side is brown, female-specific, and right It is scarlet, the distinctive tone of the males. According to the researchers, it is a bilateral ginandromorph, that is to say, an organism containing both male characteristics and female characteristics, distributed on both sides of the body. the axis of the body. Although we know little about this atypical phenomenon and that we can not determine its nature before the badysis of its genes, this badual division has already been reported in others. birds, reptiles, butterflies and crustaceans. Still according to Daniel Hooper, an evolution biologist at Cornell University's ornithology lab, he said the division that presents bird Just in the middle of the plumage already results in an extraordinary case.

Hooper explained that gynandromorphs could be created by merging two separately fertilized developing embryos and that the separation in the middle is due to the fact that vertebrates grow symmetrically. And, even more, predicted to suspect that each side of the bird could be brother or sister of the other.

Hooper does not believe that there is any reason to guarantee that there is a greater probability of mixed gender among cardinals than among other creatures, but their contrast of colors gives them a particular notoriety. The cardinal woman has a brown color and is quieter than men with their intense tones. In addition to the red color, male cardinals sing more often with more complex tunes, both to proclaim their territory and to attract women.