Chicken Undergoes Natural Sex Change
Posted by Justin on April 1st, 2011
Gertie the hen is now Gerry the cockerel.
Well… we don’t know if they call him Gerry but this chicken certainly did have a sex change. Which is apparently normal amongst some chickens.
The first sign that something was afoot with Gertie was that she stopped laying eggs, her owners, Jim and Jeanette Howard of Huntingdon, England, told the local media. Next, she began strutting around their garden and crowing like a rooster. Over the next few weeks, Gertie put on weight and developed wattles beneath her chin, a feature normally exhibited only by males. She also grew dark brown plumage and a scarlet cockscomb atop her head, both male traits.
”I know it sounds ridiculous but I can assure you it’s all true,” Jim Howard told cambridge-news.co.uk. “People think it’s a bit weird but
apparently its one of those things that does happen.”“Sex reversals do, in fact, occur—although not very frequently,” states a 2000 report published by the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “To date, however, spontaneous sex reversal from male to female has not been reported.”
This is not an April Fools day prank. We just want to make that clear. This is an actual science fact. A science fact we like to refer to as the +1.
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April 1st, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Bringing in Justin’s interest in Jurassic Park, this is actually mentioned in that movie. When a particular gender imbalance is reached there is potential for sex changes to occur in particular subjects in order to help the species. It hasn’t been observed to happen in every species, but it has been observed to happen in a few.
April 1st, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Bringing in Justin’s interest in Jurassic Park, this is actually mentioned in that movie. When a particular gender imbalance is reached there is potential for sex changes to occur in particular subjects in order to help the species. It hasn’t been observed to happen in every species, but it has been observed to happen in a few.