Endangered Birds Experience 'Virgin Birth,' a First for the Species (nationalgeographic.com) 60
Female California condors don't need males to have offspring -- joining sharks, rays, and lizards on the list of creatures that can reproduce without mating. From a report: "There's something really confusing about the condor data." Those weren't the words Oliver Ryder wanted to hear as he walked to his car after a long day's work trying to save California condors, one of the most endangered animals on the planet. When his colleague Leona Chemnick explained what she was seeing, his dread quickly changed to fascination. For decades, scientists have been trying to coax the California condor back from the edge of extinction. The entire population of these birds crashed to just 22 animals in 1982. By 2019, captive breeding and release efforts had slowly built the total population up over 500. Doing that has required careful management of captive birds, particularly selecting which males and females can breed to produce healthy offspring. That's how, as the scientists took a closer at genetic data, they discovered that two male birds -- known only by their studbook numbers, SB260 and SB517 -- showed no genetic contribution from the birds that should have been their fathers.
In other words, the birds came into the world by facultative parthenogenesis -- or virgin birth -- according to a peer-reviewed paper published October 28 in the Journal of Heredity. Such asexual reproduction in normally sexually reproducing species occurs when certain cells produced with a female animal's egg behave like sperm and fuse with the egg. Though rare in vertebrates, parthenogenesis occurs in sharks, rays, and lizards. Scientists have also recorded self-fertilization in some captive bird species, such as turkeys, chickens, and Chinese painted quail, usually only when females are housed without access to a male. But this is the first time it's been recorded in California condors.
In other words, the birds came into the world by facultative parthenogenesis -- or virgin birth -- according to a peer-reviewed paper published October 28 in the Journal of Heredity. Such asexual reproduction in normally sexually reproducing species occurs when certain cells produced with a female animal's egg behave like sperm and fuse with the egg. Though rare in vertebrates, parthenogenesis occurs in sharks, rays, and lizards. Scientists have also recorded self-fertilization in some captive bird species, such as turkeys, chickens, and Chinese painted quail, usually only when females are housed without access to a male. But this is the first time it's been recorded in California condors.
DIY pregnancy. (Score:3, Funny)
Scientists have also recorded self-fertilization in some captive bird species, such as turkeys, chickens, and Chinese painted quail, usually only when females are housed without access to a male. But this is the first time it's been recorded in California condors.
Add a woman's prison to the list. :-D
Birds use ZW, primates use XY. (Score:5, Informative)
Add a woman's prison to the list. :-D
Funny. But for people it could only produce girls.
Birds use the ZW system: Females are ZW, males ZZ. Further, both sexes have one male and one female reproductive organ, rather than two of one kind, with only one of them (usually) fully functional. Under stresses (such as an all-male or all-female population) birds of many species can mature the other organ and self-fertilize, or both mature the inappropriate one and let the appropriate one atrophy, changing physiological sex.
Genetic females that self-fertilize produce offspring of either sex, as do those that change to male (though a quarter of their offspring would be WW and I'm not sure how those work out, while the rest would be 2/3 female). Genetic males that sex-change produce only males (unless mating with a sex-changed genetic female, which would be exceedingly unlikely).
People use the XY system and even with abnormal sex chromosome counts you get a physiological female if even one of the sex chromosomes is Y. So a women's prison virgin birth (absent divine intervention B-) ) would always be female or haploid female, whether by self-fertilization, haploid activation, haploid-and-doubling, or cloning.
Sex changes and the like happen fairly often with domestic chickens. Leghorns are very productive white-egg layers with a nasty temperment. A few years back a leghorn cock laid an egg, which some biologists hatched. They joked that they had hoped the chick would be a cocatrice (a legendary dragonish-monster with turn-to-stone vision, hatched from a cock's egg), but had only gotten another leghhorn. When I heard this, I cracked "How could they tell?" I hear that became a running gag among show-chicken people.
Re: Birds use ZW, primates use XY. (Score:2)
Funny that birds are not loaded down or could ever understand what you so bleatith on about.
The life of a bird must be a rather pleasant one.
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Came here for this.
Am leaving semi-disappointed because it wasn't the first post.
Re:Birds use ZW, primates use XY. (Score:5, Interesting)
Female human is almost always XX. There are some exceptions, exceedingly rare, but it's definitely not a pure binary system. However what matters is not really the Y chromosome but the SRY gene (a sorry pun). And some other helper genes as well. The XX-XY idea of female versus male was an idea that become dogmatized before genes and development were understood, but it's very accurate statistically even if there are a handful of errors.
But the SRY gene can sometimes show up on an X chromosome. Plus just the gene's presence or absence is not the only thing that determines male versus female. It's a complicated recipe with lots of ingredients and an environmental setting and tight timing requirements. You're backing a souffle here. There's a whole range of rare intersex results that can occur; often hushed up, sometimes with operations to "correct" things to the parents wishes, etc. But you can have an XX that appears to be male outwardly even to a doctor, dogma be damned.
You can also have XY that presents outwardly as female (Swyer's Syndrome). So such a person if incarcerated would typically be in a women's prison. However, in such individuals the ovary development is stunted and most likely none could reproduce. But since we're already throwing away 1950's dogma in the face of science, should we continue to be dogmatic and claim it's impossible for an XY female to have functioning ovaries and further be able to carry an offspring to term? It would be highly unlikely, you still need a uterus and all the complex hormonal timings to have fetal development. But stepping back a bit, what about a fertilized XY egg from a single XY-female parent that can be implanted in a different female surrogate that develops as male? (assuming the female prison allows such things and is not merely a lewd B-movie thought experiment)
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There are some exceptions, exceedingly rare, but it's definitely not a pure binary system. However what matters is not really the Y chromosome but the SRY gene (a sorry pun). And some other helper genes as well.
If the SRY gene is both present and expressed, it's a male. Otherwise, it's a female. How is that anything other than binary? (Technically there's also neuter, though that is more the absence of sex, and indeed, they can't reproduce. In computer terms, it's more like a null pointer.)
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Because there's a large range of intersex variations. As in having underdeveloped sex organs to have parts of both, etc.
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Those cases would be neuter.
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You're asking if the zebra is white with black stripes or black with white stripes. Gene allele expression is a funny thing. Doesn't have to happen the same in every cell, you know. Even if the contrast is 100% like in zebras and you can't have 30% gray zebra, in total it's never 100% this or that. Like yin and yang.
Except for the Pink Panther. He's 100% pink.
That aside, can Baphomet beget themselves?
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AFAIK intersex in the case of a normal XY pair isn't due to allele expression, rather it's due to developmental anomalies.
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Typo in grandparent post: Even one Y makes a MALE (Score:3)
Sorry, I blew an edit while composing the above. It should have read:
"People use the XY system and even with abnormal sex chromosome counts you get a physiological male if even one of the sex chromosomes is Y."
E.g: XXY, XXXY, XXYY are all physiologically male. (YY or Y is dead unless the Y is abnormal with some crossover from the X. There's necessary stuff missing from bare Ys.)
The rest should make more sense with that correction. B-b
I agree that my description of the system is oversimplified and your
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Isn't it theorized that the 'y'-chromosome was, at one point a mutation from an 'X' chromosome? Morphologically, the 'y' chromosome is more like an 'X' chromosome with a missing right-branch. From a genetics standpoint, there are more genetically passed diseases that express in males due to the y only getting only half the number of copies of some genes, while females are more prone to auto-immune related problems for over-activated immunity functions.
Thus it seems, even though less likely, it seems an
If you don't want to get 'balanced' (Score:2, Insightful)
Check their midichlorian counts. And don't frighten them.
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Check their midichlorian counts. And don't frighten them.
Or get them wet after midnight.
Holy Hyperbole, Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Those weren't the words Oliver Ryder wanted to hear as he walked to his car after a long day's work trying to save California condors, one of the most endangered animals on the planet."
Was Dr. Ryder out there in the field building habitats for Condors to mate in, or clearing debris that tends to kill Condors, or hunting invasive species that compete with Condors for food or directly hunt Condors as a food source?
Of course not. I'm not directing this at the good doctor, I have no doubt that interacting with all of the other people that have to get on-board to try to make a large ecological effort actually bear fruit is mentally wearying, particularly if one got into the scientific discipline for the actual science work rather than navigating bureaucracy. It's the author of the article that's silly. Not everything has to be turned into a melodrama. It doesn't really matter when Dr. Ryder learned of the facultative parthenogenesis, what matters is that it occurred.
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If you read the article, you'll find that it was also a dark and stormy night!
parthenogenesis =/= virgin birth (Score:5, Interesting)
> showed no genetic contribution from the birds that should have been their fathers
suggests that these were NOT virgin births
There are two broad types of parthenogenesis - one is completely spontaneous (e.g. "virgin births"), while the other must be triggered by mating normally, but doesn't actually incorporate the male's genetic material.
If they know who the father "should" be, that would suggest the non-virgin birth form.
Interesting that the offspring would be male though - I'm pretty sure that couldn't happen with mammals unless the mother was something like XXY, which almost always causes sterility. But it sounds like gender selection is a lot more complicated in birds, with different species even using different mechanisms, not all of them even well understood yet.
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Upvote this.
Without conclusive evidence that the females were 100% monitored, with no access at any point to any other male ...
Imagine if all the Jerry Springer shows that had paternity tests showing that the husband/boyfriend isn't the father led to scientists all declaring, "IT'S A VIRGIN BIRTH!"
Re: parthenogenesis =/= virgin birth (Score:4, Informative)
The two condors in question don't have genetic material from any male condors. That's pretty clear evidence as the species population is extremely small and all are identified and have genetic samples on record. Almost every condor was bred in captivity and the birds in the wild are well-monitored.
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That's a completely unrelated issue. And very unlikely since the female is almost certainly locked in a cage with only one male. Endangered population breeding programs are generally *very* careful about monitoring gene-lines. Like the Adam and Eve myth, you're essentially looking at building a sustainable population based entirely on extreme inbreeding. And while that can turn out fine if you start with really outstanding genetic stock, using typical stock it go very wrong, very quickly. So you need to
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I hate seeing a mistake just as I hit the submit button. In the first paragraph that should be:
---using typical stock it can go very wrong, very quickly---
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Slashdot, home to “all these scientists are full of shit”.
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FTFA: "What’s particularly bizarre about the condors, says Ryder, is that SB260 and SB517 had different mothers, each of them housed with males. What’s more, both mothers had successfully reproduced with those males before and after."
So neither of the mothers of the (male) babies were actually virgins...
And both babies died young, 2 and 8 years, for a species that can live over 50 years.
Still, impressive.
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It is even weirder with birds than that too...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g... [forbes.com]
Not going to help the species (Score:2)
While it may increase the number of individuals, it's decreasing the genetic diversity, making survival harder.
If you're not incorporating genes from two parents, you're going to end up with magnification of any undesirable recessive traits.
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The first concern is extinction: inbreeding should be a secondary concern, especially with parthenogenesis where reinforcement of lethal recessive traits is unlikely.
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If you're not incorporating genes from two parents, you're going to end up with magnification of any undesirable recessive traits.
Having a second partner does not magically the "undesirable recessive traits" go away.
Life ... (Score:3)
-J. Goldblum
God dammit (Score:4, Funny)
All this time waiting for the Messiah and it turned out to be a damn bird, and not even good looking. I expected winged Jesus to at least have hair.
The Birds (Score:2)
Sounds like a fun sequel to The Birds. Make it campy instead of condescending to us like a Star Trek reboot.
Winged Jesus leads the birds to cleanse the earth of the human virus.
But seriously, we've polluted the Earth with endocrine disruptors and other chemicals that have been transgendering frogs etc. (literally, I'm not talking about Ann Coulter's adam's apple.)
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All this time waiting for the Messiah and it turned out to be a damn bird, and not even good looking. I expected winged Jesus to at least have hair.
Father : Ooh, it must have been about seven, eight years ago. Me and the little lady was out on this boat, you see, all alone at night, when all of the sudden this huge creature, this giant bird from the Paleolithic Era, comes out of the water.
...and I yelled, I said,
Mother : We was so scared, Lord have mercy, I jumped up in the boat, and I said, "Thomas, Thomas, what on earth is that creature?"
Father : It stood above us looking down with these big red eyes...
Mother : Oh, it was so scary!
Father :
Endangered Birds Experience 'Virgin Birth,' a Firs (Score:1)
"Virgin birth" (Score:4, Funny)
The birds and the bees... (Score:3)
So, what I was told about the birds was poppycock? I bet the bees stuff is all nonsense, too!
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Yes, the bees stuff is nonsense. So stop doing the butt wiggle dance to try and show your dates where to find the flowers and they'll stick around longer.
Other species may do this too (Score:2)
I always suspected this may have been the case with a woman in my office who went on maternity leave. She bore more than a passing resemblance to a condor, especially around the throat and eyes.
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Did she consume the flesh of the dead?
a virgin birth changed my life (Score:2)
He erased my guilt and calmed my inner storms.
His name is Jesus. Let Him into your life today!
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More likely: Mary was just really, really good at talking her way out of difficult situations. She's lucky Geraldius Springerian wasn't in Bethlehem at the time doing paternity tests.
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That Mary still was a virgin when she gave birth, is a mistranslation.
She was married to Joseph, so obviously they did in the wedding night - or the night after in case the party was to wild: what every freshly wedded couple is doing.
She was a virgin when she married, though. And that is what the original Aramaic phrase means.
If any priest is so confused to teach that Mary was a virgin at birth of Jesus, then he never studied religion - as you learn such simple facts actually on priest school.
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I let someone who was born that way into my life. He erased my guilt and calmed my inner storms. His name is Jesus. Let Him into your life today!
You shouldn't believe everything you read. Also you should try reading some more recent and much better written fiction.
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Greatness belongs to those who can hear what the crowd rejects.
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It's the end of time for men (Score:2, Funny)
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This gives hard-core feminists even more ammunition to get rid of men.
I’d like to turn the tables on these uterus gatekeepers, why can’t men have a uterus and some eggs of their own? Once we get the technology up to that level, no one will need anyone else, that outta finally show everyone who’s boss!
Vulnerable birds (Score:2)
The benefits of having a male and female used in reproducing is creating genetic variances in a population.
With just the female involved, you start to loose that variance, and this makes the population much more vulnerable to disease as a whole, thus a higher kill count for fatal viruses and germs.
Yeah, we now are 'guaranteed' more birds in the short term. But we are also guaranteed that a single virus could wipe out the entire Cal-condor population.
Not us gladly (Score:2)
Jesus bird egg communion (Score:2)
So we now have a Jesus bird... if that bird lays an egg, and we eat that egg, wouldn't that be like communion?
If the Jesus bird lays eggs that hatch and turn into more birds, would eating those birds be like taking communion?
Or are they more like Holy Soylent Green-birds?
I'm sorry, it's been a long week.
I was the milkman... obviously (Score:2)
I'm sorry but Occam's Razor says that unless these researchers were watching the birds 24/7/365, they could have easily missed them getting busy with a male that they didn't know about.
Re: I was the milkman... obviously (Score:2)
There are no unknown males. At one point the wild population was down to 7 individuals. The vast majority have been bred in captivity and it is a very closely monitored species.