Bilateral gynandromorph: the fate of a half-male, half-female bird

Yes I know what you are thinking, this photo must be photoshopped. However it is not! It is a gynandromorph, an organism that contains both male and female characteristics.

Even more interesting, this particular bird, a Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a bilateral gynandromorph, with its left side appearing as a male cardinal, and the right side as a female. The demarcation is so clear that only when both halves of the bird were observed simultaneously was it evident that the bird was a bilateral gynandromorph.

Bilateral gynandromorphy arises very early in development, typically when the organism is still only a few cells large. This happens when one of the dividing cells does not split its sex chromosomes as normal, leading to one of the two cells having sex chromosomes that cause male development, and the other cell having chromosomes that cause female development.

Researchers have long known such split-sex gynandromorphs exist in a range of animals such as insects, crustaceans, and birds but rarely have scientists been able to study them. For this particular bird two scientists were able to follow it for more than 40 days and to document how it interacted with other birds and responded to various bird calls.

What they found is that the cardinal did not have a mate nor was it ever heard singning, the researchers report this month in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology. The observers luckily also observed that the bird’s unusual looks did not raise any fierce aggression in its fellow cardinals.

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