Animal Oddities
One of the reasons I love animal necropsies is that you never know what you will find. Doing one is like opening a box of cereal and finding not only the prize, but sometimes you find 2 prizes–the expected stuff AND something unusual that doesn’t get reported very often. Mummified twins, both sex organs, or foreign objects like coins and toys are pretty common. They are fun to find because they are rare and sometimes pretty strange.
This week there seems to be a boon on strange and rare animal happenings, and I am happy to report on three of them:
The first one is a cat from Zianyag City, in the Shaanxi province of China who grew what appear to be wings. The owner said it happened after a traumatic event with some cats in heat, but the local veterinarians seem to think it is some kind of genetic mutation that allowed the appendages to form. OK, I did not believe it either until I Googled it. So go ahead and see for yourself……The picture I saw was pretty neat.
The next story caught my eye because it involved chickens. A hen in Calcutta India, who was laying eggs six months ago, spontaneously underwent a sex change and turned into a rooster. The picture that came with this story wasn’t all that spectacular, but I looked it up and this kind of thing happens more often than you would think. It would be interesting if the rooster goes on to father babies. And only time will tell if that will happen.
The last strange story concerns a shark born at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska. It seems its mother was able to fertilize her own eggs and have the baby, sans a male being in the tank. Scientists at first doubted their DNA test results, so they conducted the testing several times before determining that there was no male DNA present whatsoever. Although this happens commonly in insects, and happens occasionally in reptiles and fish, it has never been reported in mammals–but with all the strange things happening this week, I am going to watch the news for it!.
Well there you have it. Cats with wings, chickens deciding it is better to be a rooster, and an impatient shark who wanted a baby when no males were available. Animals are simply amazing!
(Please keep sending good thoughts to the mother whale and her baby caught in the river in California. Both are injured and may not live much longer if they don’t reach the ocean soon.)