Wry Ink: Call’em hoosters, rens, or just confused. Some chickens all male, all female depending on which part you examine.
Weird research news attracts the attention of reporters and editors alike, and weird sex news especially so. And when it involves chickens it suddenly becomes safely funny too. Thus a recipe for coverage: put in the prestigious journal Nature a report on why some chickens are part male and part female – but a mosaic and not blended. The left side may be one gender, the right the other. Even the wattle may be bifurcated. People whose tissues result from a merger of two fetuses of opposite sex tend to blur the boundaries, it says here, as hormones largely steer development and not X or Y chromosome genes. Not so in chimeric chickens.
This sounds like a Monty Python routine. Add that a rooster is also called a cock? And the Institute that did the research is part of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies? Not worth mentioning is the name of its campus. I’m well into overreach territory here, but this news is from Scotland where its normal for men to wear kilts and that always seems to many of us non-Scots kind of weird too.
Anyway, no outlet went as fully stupid giggling adolescent as I just did. But this is one spicy, harmless opportunity for the science writer to make the editor and the copy desk headline writer happy while also reporting some inherently interesting news on the biology of sexual development. Surprisingly, relatively few major news agencies bothered. Even the usually reliably japing Brit tabloids are quiet. Sheesh. (I did look – no chickens at the Daily Mail, but speaking of ace news judgment check out its gallery of photos of overloaded transports).
Stories:
- BBC – Huw Williams: Scientists solve half-cock chicken mystery ;
- Wired News – Brandon Keim: Half-cocked? Hermaphrochickens Challenge Gender Determination ;
- Science News – Susan Milius: Chicken cells have strong case of sexual identity ; Whattayaknow. Not a snigger to be found here – the one joke is just a mild play on the crossing the road riddle.
- AAAS ScienceNOW – Lauren Schenkman: No Sexual Confusion for Chicken Cells ;
- NPR – Joe Palca: Half-Rooster/Half-Hen Helps Unlock Sex Mystery ; Including a survey for readers, and immediate introduction to an obscure word of the day: gynandromorph.
- LiveScience – Jeanna Bryner: Funky chickens have sexual-identity issues ;
Grist for the Mill: Univ. Edinburgh/Roslin Institute Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
March 13th, 2010 at 6:53 am
Yep, well into overreach, even stereotyping, territory with the idea that in Scotland it is normal for men to wear kilts. As a Scot, I can assure you the vast majority of men in Scotland do not even own a kilt.
March 15th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Glad you agree that I overreached – as I said I did. I’ll allow and even embrace too silly, but I do disagree that saying it’s normal for men to wear kilts in Scotland is to imply that it is typical. My own step brothers wear them, perfectly normally (there’s a clan in their ancestry) for weddings and such, but hardly often. It’s normal – as in not-abnormal, for Americans to go bowling often, but I don’t know anybody who bowls or, that I’m aware of, who owns a bowling ball. Perhaps, strictly as it’s derived from “norm” the word normal ought to apply to things done by a preponderance of people. But think – abnormal almost always suggests odd. That’s all I meant – it’s not so odd. Thanks.