Farmers Stumbled on Genetics That Stop Chickens Loving Their Offspring

Birds have a timbre known as broodiness . It means that , after they lie their eggs , they stick around and take care of those eggs . Most commercial wimp do n’t have that character . And it looks like their complete neglect for their offspring solution from one genic mutation .

Broodiness , in wimp , is not a trait that Fannie Merritt Farmer take account . Every mo a biddy outride sitting on an egg is a second that she is n’t off producing another egg . Ideally , farmers want hens that will send away an egg and right away digress off . Even “ backyard ” wimp James Leonard Farmer choose chicken that are n’t broody .

This is why many commercial-grade hen have no enatic feeling . They ’ve been help along by James Leonard Farmer , who select against broodiness , but a deficiency of care for their eggs seems to have started as a genetic mutation in the White Leghorn breed of chicken quite some time ago . What ’s amazing about this is researchers conceive that it ’s flat - out genetic . One cistron gets expressed less , and hen go away their egg to immobilize .

Spacex Starship Separation

scientist do n’t yet know which factor . For some time , they believed that the cistron that determined broodiness was on one of the Z sex chromosomes of chicken . Now they believe it autosomal — housed somewhere on one of the chromosomes that do n’t determine sexual urge . Somewhere in chicken DNA is a gene that snap their concern for their children off like a lightswitch . Now I ’m not saying the same affair exists in human DNA . Chickens are sometimes exemplar organisms for humans , but they ’re mostly studied asmodels for embryologic vertebrate growth . Still , it ’s interesting to imagine that genetic science could have a similar event on us . Could a gene make us entirely unconcerned for our own children ?

[ root : genetic science of Broodiness in Poultry ]

AnimalschickensGeneticsScience

Lilo And Stitch 2025