Gianni the Gender-Bending Rooster Starts to Lay Eggs, Baffling Scientists

Gianni started life as a red-blooded cockerel and would often wake his Italian owners up crowing on his farm in Tuscany.

But when a fox raided Gianni’s enclosure and killed all of the hens inside, Gianni felt it was time for a change.

Within days the bird was laying eggs and trying to hatch them as he began his new life as a hen.

The sex-change chicken has baffled scientists at the UN’s Farm and Agriculture Organisation, who are now planning to study Gianni’s DNA to see what made him change.

An expert at the centre said: ‘It may be a primitive species survival gene. With all the females gone he could only ensure the future of his line by becoming female.’

Professor Donato Matassino, who will be leading tests on Gianni, said: ‘This rooster-hen will be taken to the laboratories of Consdabi (Consortium for the experimentation and application of innovative biotechniques) for a series of behavioural and genetic tests.
http://www.disinfo.com/2010/05/now-im-a-chick-gianni-the-gender-bending-rooster-starts-to-eay-eggs-baffling-scientists/

This will be fodder for somebody.

We had too many roosters and we slaughtered all but one for about 20 hens. About 2 months later, I noticed the dominate female acting like a rooster. She mounts the females, makes that cooing sound to draw over the other hens when she finds a particularly tasty bug. She lays nice eggs but I have never seen the rooster mount her.

When I had about 4 rooster, I would see the dominant male mount the smaller males, though I think this was more of a display of dominance than about gender liquidity.

I think gender is a lot more fluid than the crazy christians want you to believe.

.... males can't ovulate, no matter how fervently they may wish to do so. I believe in the science of that.

If this rooster is truly laying eggs and it's not a hoax, something very strange biologically has occurred.

things like amphibians and some fish can change genders if there are population limits that require it. Never heard of it in a chicken though, and people have been raising so many chickens so long that it seems like somebody would have noticed it before if it was possible. So I agree, if not a hoax then something very strange.

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