# homafrodite mouse!



## laoshu

Well I guess a few homafrodite mice might of been born here over the years but I have never noticed until today!

This female I kept back for my breeding but the last couple of times I cleaned her out I had noticed she didnt look quite right! today I had a propper look at her as she is at breeding age now and noticed that she is not all woman...





































s/he is available if anyone wants to give her a good home.


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## SarahY

Oh what a shame, s/he is a beautiful mouse!

Sarah xxx


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## neurozool

Where are you? I am stateside, and if you are too, I would love to give her/him a good home! All my mice are pets, so that fact that s/he cannot be bred would not bother me at all!


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## moustress

Yupper, that's a hermaphrodite, all right. Now I don't feel singled out by fate, as this thing happens way too often in some of my tri lines.


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## Rhasputin

It would be nice to have one, as a friend for a lonely buck. Are you in the US?


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## SarahY

Haha, friends-across-the-pond, the lovely Laoshu belongs to us! She lives in the middle of England 

Sarah xxx


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## Autumn2005

Too bad... Lovely mouse. So the mouse is male with female characteristics? Or female with male...? Okay, what I'm really asking, is if this mouse is put with another, could s/he get pregnant or cause pregnancy?


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## Rhasputin

It's most likely sterile, Autumn.


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## Autumn2005

Okay, because I thought that might be awkward, not knowing whether to place it with a buck/doe to prevent pregnancies.


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## laoshu

well I have put this on another forum as well and have several other sugestions as to what it may be ... so we may not be looking at a homafrodite after all... tomorrow I will get her out again and take a video of her to give everyone more of an idea how they look.


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## moustress

My little tri weirdos were put in with girls due to mistakenly thinking they were normal females, and got several does pregnant.


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## Autumn2005

Eek! So at least some of them are enough on the male side that you need to be careful if you place them with girls...


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## WillowDragon

While this does look like testicles on a female mouse, keep a close eye on it, as it could also be a prolaspe.

W xx


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## moustress

I check under the tails of young tris with much greater frequency now.


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## Autumn2005

moustress, have you ever put a s/he in with boys, and it got pregnant? Or do you keep those one in their own special tank now?


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## moustress

Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that I have had the pleasure of looking a tank of young bucks and seeing a pile of pink. The thing that's even weirder is that the boys didn't fight over the doe at all! At least, not when I was in the mousery.


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## Autumn2005

Do you find that the hermaphrodite-ism gets passed down more frequently in certain lines? I think you've mentioned before that you think it has to do with the instability of certain genes in the tri genertics?


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## laoshu

After being in talks with someone who was very helpful and having another look at the mouse closely I am sure it is vaginal atresia and not a homafrodite mouse.
what this means is the mouse's vagina has not opened up and is sealed and the bulge is a build up of fluids. I had heard about it in humans before but never thought about it in other mammals.

I didnt think the bulge acted like a prolapse but after a good look last night the vagina is very sealed and the bulge does act like fluid and will move in and out the area but is fixed in the area like testicals would be.


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## nuedaimice

Yes, I've had a few like that pop out of certain lines. (I have some photos very similar to yours, except its a PEW mouse)


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## WillowDragon

laoshu said:


> After being in talks with someone who was very helpful and having another look at the mouse closely I am sure it is vaginal atresia and not a homafrodite mouse.
> what this means is the mouse's vagina has not opened up and is sealed and the bulge is a build up of fluids. I had heard about it in humans before but never thought about it in other mammals.
> 
> I didnt think the bulge acted like a prolapse but after a good look last night the vagina is very sealed and the bulge does act like fluid and will move in and out the area but is fixed in the area like testicals would be.


I had never heard of this! I will remember this for the future definately!

W xx


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## Rhasputin

Is the fluid going to cause problems? Will it need to be drained?


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## laoshu

The mouse could have an operation to sort this but I personslly dont agree with operations on animals so small to prolong a life that I can not be sure will not suffer pain after so this girl will be pts.


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## Rhasputin

Well I mean. Is the fact that she has a closed vagina going to cause her health problems, and pain? Or will she live a happy average life?


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## laoshu

I am sure (with out doing more checking first) that this will lead to complications later on.


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## ian

She looks like a great mouse, shame to be losing her from breeding, but it looks like your blue lines are doing well.


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## moustress

Bummer.

My hermaphrodite probably suffer from trisomy, having an extra X chromosome, or, at least enough of one to create reproductive abiguity. I've never had this sort of thing happen outside of my tri lines.


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## Autumn2005

Too bad about your mouse... Is this related to pyometria in unspayed dogs?


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