THEN

NOW

The bird before and after the gender change. (Naeem Ansari)

June 9: Lady bird has become a gentleman.

An 18-year-old female pheasant in Lucknow zoo has changed into a male, in the first recorded instance of such transformation among birds in India, according to the Bombay Natural History Society.

The gender change was mentioned in the latest newsletter of the society, which monitors ornithological activity in the country.

“She/he had the same plumage as a male, but still retained her cautious gait and is shy,” wrote BNHS director Asad Rahmani. “Probably that will change soon, and she will get the cocky flamboyance of a male.”

Which may not be far away as the sex change — or should we say hencroachment? — has ensured the silver pheasant now stands approximately 125cm, the size of an average male, usually larger than a female pheasant.

Rahmani said that though rare, gender transformations were not unknown among pheasants. “But it is striking as the male and female look very different.”

While the female is drab in appearance, the male is white, has a long tail, a glossy black chest and a red crest.

Lucknow zoo director Ranu Singh said the bird, a common inmate of zoos, began to change from 2006. “The female hormones would have become inactive, and the male hormones got activated, causing the development of male characteristics,” she said.

Dr Dipankar Ghose, senior coordinator with the World Wildlife Fund, eastern region, who has worked extensively on Tragopan pheasants in Northeast India, said it was all the more unique because the possibility of sex change decreases with age.

At 18 years, the pheasant is of an advanced age, he said, and added that he had “only seen instances of partial change among birds in the wild”.

So what brought about the metamorphosis? Extreme changes in temperature, toxicity in food and pollution might have acted as the triggers, Ghose explained.

Sex change is also seen among other birds, like domestic fowl, Rahmani said.

A doctor at Lucknow zoo said one of the bird’s ovaries might have stopped functioning. If it’s the right ovary that takes over, it begins to produce more testosterone, a male hormone. This, the vet added, might have helped the bird develop “male plumage and secondary sexual characteristics”.

A 1941 paper by T.H. Bissonnette, published by the American Philosophical Society, endorses this view.

“In a normal female bird only the left ovary is active. Due to infections or other problems, this ovary may cease to function,” Bissonnette, one of the earliest researchers on pheasants, wrote.

“In that case the right ovary becomes active, but for some reason produces more testosterone and causes the bird to develop male plumage and secondary sex characteristics….”

Amateur ornithologist Sumit K. Sen said fish and reptiles like crocodiles also undergo sex change without external intervention. “The change from female to male is the common pattern, while the reverse almost never happens.”

Ghose said the pheasant’s transformation was now external and the change would be considered definite only when the bird — which has given birth to chicks in its earlier state — breeds successfully with females.

Last heard, the new boy wasn’t acting very cocky with the girls.