The results of testicular transplantation in brown leghorn hens

Abstract

The grafting of reproductive tissue in various abnormal environments— auto-, homo-, or heteroplastically—has proved a useful method of approach to the question of the functions and activities of the sex-gland. It has also opened up a phase of this problem which could not be readily examined otherwise—that of the much debated points of the possibility of successful transplantation of reproductive tissue into an individual of the opposite sex, and of the consequence of such transplantation both on the gonads themselves and on their associated sex characters. Work along these lines has been confined chiefly to mammals. In recent years extensive experiments have been carried out by Steinach, Sand, Lip-schütz and Moore. In birds Sand, Pezard, and Zawadowsky have been able to obtain artificial hermaphrodites, but only in isolated cases. The present report concerns a preliminary series of experiments in the fowl, in which testes grafts were implanted into females.