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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. Occasionally a photo will

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Speaker 1: circulate of a rare animal that fascinates and thrills not

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Speaker 1: just hobbyists in bird watching or the like. For example,

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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, a cardinal appeared in a Pennsylvania backyard

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Speaker 1: with plumage split practically down the middle. One side a

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Speaker 1: cherry red, the other a soft mix of yellow and brown.

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Speaker 1: Animals like this with some male and some female traits

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Speaker 1: are known as gynandromorphs. The word is a combination of

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Speaker 1: the Greek roots for female, male, and form. More specifically,

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Speaker 1: this colorful cardinal is a bilateral gynandromorph, meaning that one

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Speaker 1: side of the body takes on female secondary sex characteristics

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Speaker 1: and the other side male secondary sex characteristics. Although reproductive

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Speaker 1: organs do sometimes match up with these sex specific physical

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Speaker 1: features like ovaries appearing on the female side and testes

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Speaker 1: on the male side, this is not always the case.

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Speaker 1: You might also refer to this creature as a sexual

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Speaker 1: mosaic or a type of male female kinra Chimera is

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Speaker 1: a word that has its roots in Greek mythology and

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Speaker 1: refers to a being who carries two separate sets of DNA.

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Speaker 1: Dating back to at least the eighteen hundreds, scientists have

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Speaker 1: observed gynandromorphs in nature. They've been especially well observed in

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Speaker 1: insect and crustacean populations. Among vertebrates, gynandromorphs birds known as

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Speaker 1: half ciders among avian enthusiasts, have received the most attention.

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Speaker 1: But how do these gynandromorphs form. Longstanding scientific theories have

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Speaker 1: focused on the loss of a sex chromosome at the

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Speaker 1: stage of mitosis or cellular division, which has commonly been

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Speaker 1: described as the process by which fruit fly gynandromorph's form. However,

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Speaker 1: for a certain species like crustaceans, an imbalance of sex

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Speaker 1: determining hormone owns has also been shown to influence gynandromorphism.

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Speaker 1: But more recent theories challenge the idea of chromosomal loss,

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Speaker 1: specifically in the case of gynandromorphs birds like our cardinal friend.

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Speaker 1: In birds, sex chromosomes are designated as Z and W.

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Speaker 1: These present in males as to Z chromosomes or z Z,

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Speaker 1: and in females as one Z and one W chromosome

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Speaker 1: or ZW. Sometimes, issues during biosis lead to the fertilization

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Speaker 1: of a female pro nucleus or egg cell, which normally

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Speaker 1: unites with a male pronucleus to form a fertilized egg

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Speaker 1: with both a Z and a W chromosome and bingo

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Speaker 1: a gynandromorphs baby bird is born. Although it could be

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Speaker 1: easy to confuse gynandromorphs with intersex organisms, there are differences

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Speaker 1: between the two types of animals. Intersex animals possess genetically

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Speaker 1: similar tissue throughout their bodies. On the other hand, gynandromorphs

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Speaker 1: contain genetically diverse tissue, causing some cells to be female

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Speaker 1: and others male. So in short, yes, some animals can

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Speaker 1: be half male and half female, though their rarity makescitings

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Speaker 1: like these of treasured delight. Today's episode is based on

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Speaker 1: the article yes animals can be half male and half

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Speaker 1: email on how stuff works dot Com, written by Terry R. Lagata.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production off i Heart Radio and partnership

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Speaker 1: with how stuff works dot Com, and is produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the

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