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1 year ago
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An extremely rare 'mutant' bird that is half male and half female has been discovered in Colombia.
Scientists have revealed that a bird with half its feathers green and the other blue features both male and female characteristics.
The mutant honeycreeper was spotted by an amateur birdwatcher last year, who snapped a photo and shared it with researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
The team has finally determined the stunning, unique plumage is due to it having two sexes - females are green, and males are blue.
Biologist Hamish Spencer, who was visiting Colombia on vacation, was floored by the sight, noting the observation is the first to be made in more than one hundred years of any green honeycatcher.
Female green honeycreepers are usually green, and males are generally aqua-blue. This bird's dual coloration led scientists to conclude it was both male and female
'It is very striking, I was very privileged to see it,' he said in a statement.
As if its colors didn't make it unique enough, Spencer and his colleagues suspected the bird was also half male and half female.
Females of the species are usually green, while males tend to be aqua-blue.
So, since the bird was half of each color, it stood to reason that the colors corresponded with the sex.
The team said the bird is a particular example of bilateral gynandromorphy - male on one side and female on the other.
Gynandromorphy is often seen in arthropods, including lobsters, crabs, spiders, and insects.
Gynandromorphy is very rare in birds, much rarer than in insects or crustaceans. This specimen is only the second gynandromorph green honeycreeper ever reported.
But it has been occasionally reported in birds, specifically in sexually dimorphic birds - those species whose males and females look very different from each other.
'In birds, the phenomenon is thought to arise as a result of an error during egg meiosis, with subsequent double fertilization by separate sperm,' wrote Spencer and his colleagues in their paper on the bird, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Field Ornithology.
As a result, one side of the bird has female cells, and the other has male cells.
Scientists suspected this bird could be a young male, because of the patchy pattern of its head feathers. But it was observed for almost two years, long enough for a bird to grow into adulthood
'Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird,' Spencer said in the statement. 'The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds, I know of no examples from New Zealand ever.'
Indeed, this bird was only the second example of a gynandromorphic honeycreeper ever described in the scientific literature.
The first, described over 100 years ago, was also half blue and half green but on the opposite sides from this one.
'This particular example of bilateral gynandromorphy - male one side and female the other - shows that, as in several other species, either side of the bird can be male or female,' Spencer said.
The scientists explained that the new bird's color split was not precisely 50-50, but they were still confident that the bird was a gynandromorph.
This gynandromorphic honeycreeper was seen feeding on fruit left out by a property owner
In fact, the patterns on its head 'might be considered a little reminiscent' of those seen on a young male honeycreeper.
But this doubt was dispelled by one huge clue: The reddish-brown irises of its eyes marked it as an adult.
Plus, young male green honeycreepers' feathers do not molt in a half-and-half pattern, and this particular bird was observed for 21 months, much longer than the species' juvenile stage.
Though the bird seemed to behave much like the other green honeycreepers in the area, it may have had trouble occupying a role in the bird society: It often waited until the other honeycreepers had left before it fed on fruit left out by the property owner.
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