This is a Northern Cardinal. As US readers will know, while the male is bright red, the female is much less gaudy. (See Wikipedia for pictures). So what’s up with this particular bird? It is half boy, half girl, split right down the middle. The bird is an example of a gynandromorph. Whereas “hermaphrodite” is generally used to mean exhibiting both genders, a gynandromorph is split down the middle, one half of the body expressing as male and the other half expressing as female. Actually it can get more complicated than that. There are also “mosaic” gynandromorphs where the animal exhibits mixed patches of male and female tissue.
All of the examples I have seen of gynandromorphs have been insects and birds. Both have different chromosome systems to the one used by mammals, so I have no idea whether the phenomenon is even possible in humans. But hey, aliens…
For more information about this bird, and the biological mechanisms that cause gynandromorphs, see here.
(Thanks to Helen Boyd for finding this.)
That’s so pretty! I remember in genetics class at uni, they showed us a similar photo of a budgie that was half green and half blue. I can’t remember if it was a gynandromorph or just a single-sex chimera, but it was still rather cool!
And here I thought it was a St. Louis baseball mascot displaying both the home and away colors simultaneously. 😉
Science is so very cool…
gynandromorph lobsters are pretty cool looking as well.
So cool!!!
Oh, nice! I’ve seen chimerism in cats (tortishell cats are a common example). A girl at work has XX/XO chimerism that was picked up after she had infertility issues. (Some of her ovum were “X” and viable, but the “O” ones, sadly caused her problems.)