Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. Occasionally a photo will circulate of a rare animal that fascinates and thrills not just hobbyists in bird watching or the like. For example, in twenty nineteen, a cardinal appeared in a Pennsylvania backyard with plumage split practically down the middle. One side a cherry red, the other a soft mix of yellow and brown. Animals like this with some male and some female traits
are known as gynandromorphs. The word is a combination of the Greek roots for female, male, and form. More specifically, this colorful cardinal is a bilateral gynandromorph, meaning that one side of the body takes on female secondary sex characteristics
and the other side male secondary sex characteristics. Although reproductive organs do sometimes match up with these sex specific physical features like ovaries appearing on the female side and testes on the male side, this is not always the case. You might also refer to this creature as a sexual mosaic or a type of male female kinra Chimera is a word that has its roots in Greek mythology and refers to a being who carries two separate sets of DNA.
Dating back to at least the eighteen hundreds, scientists have observed gynandromorphs in nature. They've been especially well observed in insect and crustacean populations. Among vertebrates, gynandromorphs birds known as half ciders among avian enthusiasts, have received the most attention. But how do these gynandromorphs form. Longstanding scientific theories have focused on the loss of a sex chromosome at the stage of mitosis or cellular division, which has commonly been
described as the process by which fruit fly gynandromorph's form. However, for a certain species like crustaceans, an imbalance of sex determining hormone owns has also been shown to influence gynandromorphism. But more recent theories challenge the idea of chromosomal loss, specifically in the case of gynandromorphs birds like our cardinal friend. In birds, sex chromosomes are designated as Z and W. These present in males as to Z chromosomes or z Z, and in females as one Z and one W chromosome
or ZW. Sometimes, issues during biosis lead to the fertilization of a female pro nucleus or egg cell, which normally unites with a male pronucleus to form a fertilized egg with both a Z and a W chromosome and bingo a gynandromorphs baby bird is born. Although it could be easy to confuse gynandromorphs with intersex organisms, there are differences between the two types of animals. Intersex animals possess genetically
similar tissue throughout their bodies. On the other hand, gynandromorphs contain genetically diverse tissue, causing some cells to be female and others male. So in short, yes, some animals can be half male and half female, though their rarity makescitings like these of treasured delight. Today's episode is based on the article yes animals can be half male and half email on how stuff works dot Com, written by Terry R. Lagata.
Brain Stuff is production off i Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows