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Story
April 18, 1934
Red Lodge Daily News Combined With Carbon County News
Red Lodge, Carbon County, Montana
What is this article about?
Article explains impossibility of controlling offspring sex in animals, debunks theories like weather influence, attributes outcomes to chance, with economic benefits if possible for livestock.
Clipping
OCR Quality
100%
Excellent
Full Text
Cannot Foretell
Sex of Offspring
Many Ideas of Control Are
Without Confirmation;
Chance Rules.
Control and determination of sex in animals is at present impossible. What the future holds as to the possibility of sex-determination is also a deep mystery.
The interest is natural, since the sexes apparently arrive by chance while much economic advantage, as in dairy cows and laying hens, would accrue if sex could be pre-determined at will.
Many theories of control have been offered, and rejected, when not supported by scientific study. One of the earliest theories related sex of the offspring to the weather. A north wind at the time of conception was supposed to bring females and the south wind males. This may be right occasionally but with enough cases half of the offspring are male and half female regardless of wind direction.
Occasionally litters of pigs are born, all male or all female, or a cow in a long series of calves produces all of one sex. These are results which attract attention because of their strangeness or rarity, the workings of chance, and there is an even chance that a given offspring will be male.
If a penny is tossed a large number of times, occasional runs of heads occur. The number of times such runs are likely to occur in 10,000 throws can be worked out. It is the same with runs of males or females.
Sex of Offspring
Many Ideas of Control Are
Without Confirmation;
Chance Rules.
Control and determination of sex in animals is at present impossible. What the future holds as to the possibility of sex-determination is also a deep mystery.
The interest is natural, since the sexes apparently arrive by chance while much economic advantage, as in dairy cows and laying hens, would accrue if sex could be pre-determined at will.
Many theories of control have been offered, and rejected, when not supported by scientific study. One of the earliest theories related sex of the offspring to the weather. A north wind at the time of conception was supposed to bring females and the south wind males. This may be right occasionally but with enough cases half of the offspring are male and half female regardless of wind direction.
Occasionally litters of pigs are born, all male or all female, or a cow in a long series of calves produces all of one sex. These are results which attract attention because of their strangeness or rarity, the workings of chance, and there is an even chance that a given offspring will be male.
If a penny is tossed a large number of times, occasional runs of heads occur. The number of times such runs are likely to occur in 10,000 throws can be worked out. It is the same with runs of males or females.
What sub-type of article is it?
Curiosity
What themes does it cover?
Nature
What keywords are associated?
Sex Determination
Animal Offspring
Chance
Scientific Theories
Weather Influence
Story Details
Story Details
Control and determination of sex in animals is impossible, with many theories rejected; sex arrives by chance, as in occasional all-male or all-female litters, similar to coin toss runs.