# They were supposed to all be boys!



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

This time the mother actually looks like she has a furry little foreskin and external gonads. She/he had a small litter of four and looks like she was pretty frazzled by the time I got her out into her own tank. The thing is that the mouse looked like a freakin' buck! Pictures in the appropriate section later.


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## Erica (Apr 18, 2010)

Hermaphrodite? Is that possible in mice?


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I failed to mention that it was supposed to be a cage full of tri bucks; it would seem that hermaphroditism occurs in the line of tris I've been working with. This will about the fifth or sixth time I've looked into a cage of young boys and seen wiggly pinkness. It does get old, and now I'm going to make a policy of not breeding individuals of any litter that has had this happen. It happens, I'm pretty sure, becasue of the type of transgenic manipulation added material from a an X chromosome which was spliced into the C locus, so these mousies have a kind of ghost identity along with that, and that sometimes one gets a mousie that is XXY instead of XX or XY, when enough of the extra material, or a specific part of it, cause the hermaphrodites to occur.

The hermaphrodite meeces look like normal males until around three months of age, or thereabouts. I have been checking all my young tris for signs of anything like this, and even after giving birth, she still looks to have male characteristics along with the nipples and the vagina.


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## Elven (Apr 18, 2010)

That is just weird. I allways thought that fermaphrodites could not breed, some breeders even keep them in older males cages to keep them company. 
There are some pictures in finlands hiirifoorumi, have you found them?


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Hiirifoorumi is where I turned last year when I wanted to figure out what was going on with my tri meeces. The moderators and several members were very helpful. The posts are still up in the English language portion if you want to see what we said. there are even pix of hermaphrodites that Rapunzel posted. The genetics involved in the tri factor cause things that are just plain weird, such as this. I have learned my lesson, and now, when in doubt as to the sex of a young mouse, I always put it with the males, as one unexpected litter is only a little bother, whereas three or four really is inconvenient. Yes, I did have a couple of tanks of girls where a tri hermaphrodite nailed several does....now I judge any lengthening in urogenital distance that doesn't belong on a doe to be a probable hermaphrodite. I may start culling these individuals.


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