FINCHforum

This is my male Chile. He is a red bronze but he has green patches throughout the red color... Is it possible for canaries to have different lipochrome colors? I think he has red and yellow lipochrome.
I am posting some pictures though it is hard to get good photos of this bird, he is a little flighty.

Wow, he's incredible! Lovely bird! Can't wait to move out of my condo and into a house so I can have more canaries. I just love them.

Red bronze were always my favorite. I like them even better than the artificially enhanced, red intensive, red factors. I've actually had a few bronze babies com out the purest shade of purple you can imagine without any color food whatsoever. Never got deeply involved with the genetics of it all - just did it for fun. Bob

Did you ever see one like this with the green or "yellow" lipochrome spots? I wonder if when he moults the yellow feathers will become red. Its hard to see in the photos but there are clear spots of green on him.

Did you ever see one like this with the green or "yellow" lipochrome spots?

Can't say that I have for sure, but with the thousands of canaries I've seen at shows over the years, maybe I didn't pay that close attention. In my "unscientific" evaluation, I would imagine getting something like that having paired one of my red bronze with a green intensive. Again, just an educated guess. Bob

I feel like that cross should just produce a duller red. Just like when you breed a red lipochrome to a yellow lipochrome you get an orange color right?. Hmmm... its an interesting bird, I look forward to seeing his off spring this year. Im pairing him with two hens so we shall see!

Has anyone heard of a condition called tetragametic chimerism in which fraternal twin zygotes fuse at a very early stage in the womb, forming one individual with the tissues and DNA of both twins. It is fairly common in birds, there have been sighting of wild cardinals with this condition. But there have been studies done with zebra finches and budgies. It is more noticible when the fraternal twins are male/female.

No, but I have heard of two birds hatching from a single egg.

It is fairly common in birds, there have been sighting of wild cardinals with this condition.

Just out of curiosity, how would you ever tell by looking at wild cardinal that it had that condition? Bob

With the male/female zygotes it is much easier to tell, like with cardinals. This is what they look like. I hope these links work.
One of the most studied cases was this zebra finch that is also male/female.https://www.google.com/search?q=male+/f ... 966%3B1280

But there are also cases where the chimera is not male/ female but you can still tell. You can tell when the twins have different genes for color. Here are some examples.
https://www.google.com/search?q=male+/f ... B425%3B567
https://www.google.com/search?q=male+/f ... B309%3B504
https://www.google.com/search?q=male+/f ... B500%3B380

Well the cardinal link is the only one that didn't work..lol. If you google gynandromorph cardinal you will find it in images. Very cool!

It was cool - thanks for sharing! In my mind I pictured a color cross somewhere between a male and female cardinal. Didn't expect it to be split right down the middle like that, though. Bob

The common name for them is "half-siders".

When the zygote (fertilized egg) first begins to split, to two cells, then four cells, then eight....each cell at each very early stage has its destiny defined for it already. At the two cell stage, one cell will make the left half, one will make the right half. At the four cell stage, there are now two left-half cells, each destined to make specific parts of that half, and two right-half cells, again each destined to make specific parts of that half, and so on.

So when two zygotes stick together just right, and see the other one as the second cell of the two cell stage, then one zygote will make the left half of the organism, and the other one will make the right half of the organism. If the two original zygotes had different color or other physical characteristics (like male & female), then you can see the differences split right down the middle like the original situation was. Pretty cool.