[rec.birds] On vivigen and sex

rising@utzoo.UUCP (Jim Rising) (12/11/87)

Is it possible that the people at vivigen did not realize that in birds
it is the females that are the heterogamic sex, i.e. WZ?

--Jim Rising
-- 
Name:   Jim Rising
Mail:   Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto
        Toronto, Ontario, Canada    M5S 1A1
UUCP:   {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!rising

larrabee@decwrl.dec.com (Tracy Larrabee) (12/14/87)

In article <9093@utzoo.UUCP> rising@utzoo.UUCP (Jim Rising) writes:
>Is it possible that the people at vivigen did not realize that in birds
>it is the females that are the heterogamic sex, i.e. WZ?

No, they have correctly identified female and male birds of other species
before (there have been several articles in veternary journals as well
as those in popular aviculture publications).  Their identification of
my pair of Pionus matches the findings of surgical sexing.

The only thing that along those lines that would explain this would be
if Hyacinth macaws *males* were the heterogamic ones.  (I know, I know,
this is unlikely.)

I would love to get to the bottom of this.  No bird will die from 
genetic sexing, and statistically, 1 out of 20 will die from surgical
sexing.