Quite the insult to the male condors. They were housed with the females, and but the females biologically opted for cloning themselves instead.
Male clones of themselves even!
200 000 units are ready, with a million more well on their way.
First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
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Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#32Many would argue this already occurred with Jesus, born from the virgin Mary.
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#33So this is essentially Condors cloning themselves.
How does it work? I don't know how condors regulate their internal functions. As a human, I can control my muscles and my breathing, but I can't control, say, my digestion, my liver, my heart beat (except indirectly by either relaxing or doing stressful activities). How would a bird "flip the switch" and initiate asexual reproduction?
I don't know the answers to your questions, but parthenogenesis is confirmed to happen in other organisms. So I presume it could follow an analogous mechanism with condors.
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#34So in birds, sex chromosome arrangement is a reverse of what we have in humans. Their males are ZZ and the female is ZW. Which is why only males appear from this parthenogenesis.
> Which is why only males appear from this parthenogenesis Could you explain the mechanism? If the female has both chromosomes, why couldn't it produce offspring with both?
The mechanisms of parthonenogensis aren't fully characterized, but at a high level, it occurs in a secondary oocyte during meiosis II -- the oocyte only starts out with a Z or W chromosome.
It's perhaps best shown in this figure: https://rep.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/rep/155/6/image...
(Via this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29559496/)
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#35Hmm, all birds are dinosaurs. It’s been a long time since I last saw Jurassic Park, but wasn’t something like this a plot line in the film?
Somewhat. In both cases, females were able to self-reproduce. In the film, females switched to male to fertilize. In the condors case, eggs developed without fertilization from males who were available.
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#36Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#37Apologies for the low-effort comment, but this really freaks me out. I had no idea birds could reproduce asexually! That's crazy! Feels like an unanswerable question, but: could we ever see something like this in mammals? A virgin birth, for lack of a better phrase?
According to wikipedia, it does occasionally happen that a human egg cell undergoes parthenogenesis and starts developing, but as far as has been recorded, the fetus is never viable and is usually regarded as a type of tumor called a teratoma; occasionally, this does lead to some fetus-like shape of the tumor, in which case it is known as a fetiform teratoma.
Interestingly, there are a handful of cases of functioning human individuals who have cell lines in their body that are the result of parthenogenesis: an egg cell starts dividing by itself, and is fertilized only after this process has started. Next, the feritilized cell line develops normally, while the unfertilized cell line keeps developing as well but in limited ways - in the first known case, the white blood cells of a boy were found to be entirely derived from his mother, while other cell lines were normal XY cells inherited from both parents.
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#38Many would argue this already occurred with Jesus, born from the virgin Mary.
Most Christians believe that that was not some biological process, but a true miracle where God himself bestowed this child on Mary. It would be technically correct that this was parthenogenesis, but it is a completely different... mechanism.
Most non-Christians, even if they believe Jesus was a true historical figure, do not believe that his mother was a virgin.
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#39Many would argue this already occurred with Jesus, born from the virgin Mary.
lots of stories in religion are not literal -- they are presented as undeniable Truth to quash low-level arguements
Re: First confirmed hatchings of two California condor chicks from unfertilized eggs
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it work? I don't know how condors regulate their internal functions. As a human, I can control my muscles and my breathing, but I can't control, say, my digestion, my liver, my heart beat (except indirectly by either relaxing or doing stressful activities). How would a bird "flip the switch" and initiate asexual reproduction?
Lack of chemicals from the male to inhibit the process probably
Interestingly, in this case males were in fact available - it just seems based on genetic studies that they didn't participate in these particular chicks (the mothers went on to have other chicks through normal reproduction).