This article has a bit more detail and describes the health issues these birds experienced<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/california-condors-are-capable-virgin-birth/620517/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/californ...</a><p>"both of the condors did have some documented health issues. SB260, a male hatched at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2001, died two years later after being released into the wild—he was always small and did not integrate well with the wild birds. SB517, a male hatched at Los Angeles Zoo in 2009, had a curved spine and trouble walking. He was never released into the wild and died in captivity at about age eight."
So in birds, sex chromosome arrangement is a reverse of what we have in humans. Their males are ZZ and the female is ZW. Which is why only males appear from this parthenogenesis.
I was reading the wikipedia article, and this line "Use of an electrical or chemical stimulus can produce the beginning of the process of parthenogenesis in the asexual development of viable offspring.[97]"<p>Really stood out to me. It seems like there are stimuli that can trigger this process (either naturally or induced).<p>I wonder if learning about those pathways/approaches/(APIs?) can unlock manual triggering of other behaviors (like telling an Immune system to calm down during allergies / cytokine storm, or spurring or stopping growth of certain cells...)
Apologies for the low-effort comment, but this really freaks me out. I had no idea birds could reproduce asexually! That's crazy!<p>Feels like an unanswerable question, but: could we ever see something like this in mammals? A virgin birth, for lack of a better phrase?
I can't explain how stoked I am about this, I was in SanDiego when they were on the verge of extinction, even got the chance to go behind the scenes for the original breeding program.
Knowing nature refuses to let them fade away even without our intervention is epicly awesome news.
For those thinking "Dupe", this specific submission seems to have hit the 2nd chance queue, as the item was submitted 2 days ago. Meaning it's <i>not</i> actually a duplicate.<p>Algolia shows the original submission date, at least for now:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22First%20confirmed%20hatchings%20of%20two%20California%20condor%20chicks%20from%20unfertilized%20eggs%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...</a>
Do condors generally have one egg at a time or were there other eggs hatched at the same time with a male parent? Do they think the two bird's early deaths were related to their parthenogenesis, and did the 8 year old one parent any children? On that note, what was the gender of the unfertilized chicks?
Recent and related:<p><i>The first report of asexual reproduction in California condors</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29050435" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29050435</a> - Oct 2021 (16 comments)
<i>Condors. Condors are on the verge of extinction. If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say.</i><p>Also:<p>> However, in a surprising twist, they found that neither bird was genetically related to a male—meaning both chicks were biologically fatherless; and accounted for the first two instances of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, to be confirmed in the California condor species.<p>Life, uh, finds a way.