Singing Starlings: Boys Who Should have been girls
Post Source: Daily Mail (UK)
What is their connection?
Chemicals that contaminate our food, water, environment and our bodies have been rising. Some of these chemicals are estrogen from birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy.
Scientists at Cardiff University have discovered that the brains of male starlings foraging for worms at a sewage treatment works in South-West England have been subtly changed by being contaminated by oestrogen from the contraceptive pill and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
The female hormones - present in women's urine, and passing through the sewage treatment unaffected - caused the part of the brain that controls their song to grow much bigger, causing them to sing at greater length and with even more virtuosity than usual.
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Researchers at the University of California have found that feeding female finches with a hormone used in HRT has caused them to sing, something hitherto done only by their males.
The female hormones - present in women's urine, and passing through the sewage treatment unaffected - caused the part of the brain that controls their song to grow much bigger, causing them to sing at greater length and with even more virtuosity than usual.
<...snip...>
Researchers at the University of California have found that feeding female finches with a hormone used in HRT has caused them to sing, something hitherto done only by their males.
But think again if you think this is only for the birds.
Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that average amounts [of male sperm] have fallen by well over half in the past 50 years, from an average of more than 150 million per millilitre to 66 million.
The result is that men are now less than half as fertile as hamsters.
The counts are continuing to plunge by two per cent a year, and no end to the decline is in sight. At this rate, the average man will be unable to father children within decades.
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And research at the University of Rochester in New York State has shown that the male children of women exposed to phthalates have smaller penises and other signs of feminisation of their genitals.
Communities exposed to high levels of these and other gender-bender chemicals, from the Great Lakes of North America to the Russian Arctic, have been found to give birth to twice as many girls as boys.
This may offer a clue to the cause of a mysterious shift in the sex of babies worldwide.
Conflict
Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls, in what is thought to be nature's way of compensating for the fact that males were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.
But increasingly this ratio is slipping - it is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born girls in the U.S. and Japan alone.
The result is that men are now less than half as fertile as hamsters.
The counts are continuing to plunge by two per cent a year, and no end to the decline is in sight. At this rate, the average man will be unable to father children within decades.
<...snip...>
And research at the University of Rochester in New York State has shown that the male children of women exposed to phthalates have smaller penises and other signs of feminisation of their genitals.
Communities exposed to high levels of these and other gender-bender chemicals, from the Great Lakes of North America to the Russian Arctic, have been found to give birth to twice as many girls as boys.
This may offer a clue to the cause of a mysterious shift in the sex of babies worldwide.
Conflict
Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls, in what is thought to be nature's way of compensating for the fact that males were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.
But increasingly this ratio is slipping - it is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born girls in the U.S. and Japan alone.
The saying that "you are what you eat" holds true... whether we know we are eating it matters not.