Monday, April 27, 2009

Egg-laying boys

Watch out fellow males, you too could be recruited for a dastardly experiment.

A fish researcher has created egg-laying male bluegills by giving the boys estrogen. Then he uses normal males to fertilize the male-produced eggs. The offspring? So-called "super males" that have two y chromosomes and can be counted on to mate with normal females to produce only male offspring.

Why? Because fish farmers prefer to raise male bluegills--they're twice as big as females and thus more profitable.

3 comments:

Latitude 43 said...

Amazing what some folks will do for a buck.

Henry Coppola said...

what are bluegills being farmed for?

Mark Powell said...

bluegill are being farmed for food and as gamefish (to plant in lakes for fishing).