3 ms·

Believe it or not, this actually isn't all that uncommon in birds. Certain types of turkeys and chickens will exhibit parthenogenesis ("virgin birth") somewhat

• culi 5y ago
  It's called parthenogenesis.[0] While it might not be super uncommon in certain types of turkeys, it's extremely rare overall for birds. It is a lot more common in fish, amphibians, and reptiles however. Given that it's been well-observed in reptiles, it makes me wonder how much it might actually be happening in birds and we've just been failing to observe it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis Also here's the actual study: https://academic.oup.com/jhered/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jhered/esab052/6412509 https://academic.oup.com/jhered/advance-article/doi/10.1093/...
  • anonporridge 5y ago
    Perhaps it's harder to detect because birds with their ZW sex chromosomes can produce both male and female offspring, whereas other species with XY chromosomes would only produce females, e.g. the "lesbian lizards". So, we very easily notice cases of parthenogenisis if we see an imbalance of the sexes in a population, but we that wouldn't happen in birds so we don't notice until we sequence the DNA.