Immaculate Conception: Birds in California give birth to chicks without the participation of males

American wildlife researchers have discovered that two California condors (an endangered bird) were born without any male genetic DNA. The edition told in more detail with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

The discovery that condors are capable of virgin birth (formally called parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction) surprised scientists.

Virgin births have been reported in other bird species, as well as in lizards, snakes, sharks, rays and other fish.

Only about 500 Californian condors remained in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

Fewer than two dozen birds remained in the wild in the 1980s, but numbers have increased in recent years thanks to conservation efforts.

The researchers describe how routine genetic screening of captive birds led to the discovery that the two male chicks that hatched in 2001 and 2009 were relatives of only their mothers and did not inherit DNA from any father bird.

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All 467 male condors from the breeding pool were tested. What makes this even more rare is that this is the first time a virgin birth has been found in any species of bird when the males were not present to reproduce.

Parthenogenesis is an extremely rare event, but has been documented in other species. This occurs when a cell in a female behaves like a sperm and fuses with an egg. This usually occurs in animal populations that have few or no males.

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“This is truly an amazing discovery,” Oliver Ryder, study co-author and director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo, said in a statement. “We weren’t looking for evidence of parthenogenesis.” We only confirmed this through the normal genetic tests we do to prove paternity.”

Unfortunately, both chicks have since died - one at the age of two in 2003, and the other in 2017, when he was seven years old.

Both maternal condors previously had chicks conceived in the traditional way.

One had 11 chicks, and the other, which was paired with a male for 20 years, had 23 chicks. After the "Immaculate Conception" she gave birth twice more.

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