The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Chickens in the news

NPR ran a story this morning on gender-bending chickens:

Michael Clinton of the University of Edinburgh studies these peculiar chickens, called "gynandromorphs." They're split down the middle: One side looks male; the other side, female. Clinton wanted to know how this happened.

When he started studying the half-and-half birds, Clinton figured there would have been some weird chromosomal abnormality so the gonads would send out scrambled hormonal signals.

But that turned out to be wrong. The chickens were a mix of male and female cells. And it was the cells, not the hormones, that seemed to be calling the shots.

What makes this doubly interesting for me is the Threadless T-Shirt Diane is wearing today:

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