Talk:Freemartin

Brave New World freemartins

wrt the difference between non-freemartin females and freemartins: the former are decanted with fertile ovaries.

Please sign your communications. The ovaries of freemartins are functional. It's their behavior that is different. P0M 04:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I suspect a miscommunication; the anonymous person is referring to the "Brave New World" sense, whereas POM is referring to the main sense referring to bovines. WRT the question someone posted, i.e. in "Brave New World" why are 30% of women NOT made freemartins, the book is pretty clear on that. Just for future reference, let's keep the book's whole explanatory paragraph (taken from chapter 1) here:

"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred–that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins–structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention."

This "of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety" is expressive of the general attitude of the governing authorities in the book: their first and only priority is "stability"; that the human species A. survive and B. function as smoothly as possible. They would not put such entire faith in their technology as to trust the survival of the species to it; by keeping 30% "normal" women, in the event of any disaster the "normal" method of reproduction can be reinstated. The World Controllers do not share all the prejudices which they implant in the masses; they have instituted in vitro reproduction for practical reasons, and will switch back to the old way if that ever becomes more functional.

I doubt if any of this merits being added to the article itself.

DanielCristofani 06:02, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

That's a relief. I had forgotten about the Huxley thing and almost wrote something sarcastic about the bottled bovine fetuses. I think if we do anything at all it would be best to create a disambiguation page and split bovines off from humans. P0M 06:42, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for not signing above. I assumed the comment referred to Brave New World, as you say; perhaps it could be added above the horizontal rule? Unless it is unnecessary, or the disambiguation route would be best. Stephen Compall 06:45, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Huxley sense deserves its own article. According to How_to_edit_a_page, the horizontal rule is sometimes "used to disambiguate within an article without creating a separate page", and I think that may be the best move here. I've just tweaked the lower part for better parallelism. DanielCristofani 08:25, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the Brave New World sense should either have its own article (though it would be short...), or mentioned in this one. It's often the only meaning people know (or need to know) if they are not involved with agriculture.--Richard New Forest (talk) 17:15, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't usually do Wikipedia editing, but a statement in the History section of this article ("The 18th-century physician John Hunter discovered that a freemartin always has a male twin") seems to be incorrect given that Hunter was born in 1728 and the fact that a freemartin always has a male twin was mentioned by Naturalist John Morton in his Natural History of Northamptonshire which was published in 1712 (see p. 447, section 82). Here's a link to a Google Books copy of Morton's book: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Natural_History_of_Northampton_shire/bW1MAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 Morton says this fact was even then common knowledge among farmers (whom he calls "Graziers"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:1D80:F0E0:A416:1C64:6A33:EF80 (talk) 19:14, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Chimery

I'm confused by the statement "Up to 95% of the freemartin's blood cells can be derived from those of its twin brother". At birth? Throughout its life? Aren't new blood cells generated from bones/bone-marrow? Or just red blood cells. Please clarify. Thanks! 203.147.0.44 02:18, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

A contributor called Malloc made those additions. S/he also made a few technical edits to scientific topics. Then he disappeared. Without citations it is hard to know whether there could be problems with content. To me it looks persuasive, and I would be opposed to permanently removing it. Perhaps we could keep it but look for evidence. One of the things we would need to keep in mind is that the interactions between the two embryos probably start very early on, and even stem cells might get passed around. We probably need the guidance of an embryologist. P0M 05:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I'm one of the authors of a recent research report on freemartins (free full text in Stem Cells). It's nice to see the contributors of the freemartin wiki obviously have read our paper (although they haven't cited it). I'll be happy to contribute, I just need to learn the basics of the editing system first. Meanwhile, I can clarify a couple of questions in this discussion:

• The freemartin blood is indeed permanently chimeric, and can be up to 95% derived from the brother even in an adult animal. This is possible because the bone marrow stem cells circulate in the fetal blood before settling in the bone marrow, and are effectively exchanged between the twins.
• The freemartin ovaries vary considerably in structure. In some cases they are much like normal, in others they are almost like male gonads. Thus, at least in a majority of cases, the freemartin ovaries are certainly not functional. The rest of the female genitals are usually very poorly developed, so freemartins usually are infertile.

--Miihkali 10:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It looks like your publication will answer the request that the article provide adequate references to prove its assertions. I wrote or checked much of the article, but I did it on the basis of materials present in studies of human sexuality. I do not have a collection of veterinary medicine books. If you can provide a locus classicus for the basic facts of the matter, that information would be very helpful too. P0M 15:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Detection of oestrus

Hi,

This article seems to imply that only freemartin female cows will mount other cows in estrus. I grew up on a dairy farm, and I can attest to the fact that many cows that are not freemartins will mount cows when they are in heat. It would be a waste of money to keep a freemartin around solely for this purpose. They don't produce much milk, so most dairy farmers don't keep them in their herds.

--Yenshee 3 September 2006

But do other cows do this reliably, like a freemartin does ? Modern farmers don't need freemartins because medical tests are available to identify which cow is in estrus. StuRat 09:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It would also make a difference whether normal cows mounted only estrus cows or mounted anything in sight that was of the right size and shape. I think farmers must have had a reason for selecting freemartins to detect the cows ready for breeding, especially if the farmer wanted to make sure which bull mated with which cow. P0M 06:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I keep cattle too... Bulling (oestrus) cows and heifers mount or are mounted by other females anyway, and this is enough to show most bullings, though sometimes it can be tricky to tell which of a mounting pair is bulling. Steers (castrated males) are a bit more reliable, as you can be certain which is the bulling animal (steers don't actually "do" anything, just mount, as males need the bull hormones to make their equipment extend properly). However, I can't believe that a freemartin would do any better than a steer. It is true that some bulling females (usually older, more dominant ones) will not show themselves unless confronted with a fully fertile bull – but that rather defeats the object... Surely people in the past just used freemartins like steers, for beef (as I still do today...), or for draught. I'd like to see a ref for this claim. --Richard New Forest (talk) 17:15, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Other human "freemartins"

The use as a sterile genetic "sport" in humans is not limited to Huxley - another 1930s (1970 -see below) science fiction story, an obscure one called something like "Ginny Clothed with the Sun", refers to freemartins of a prehistoric human race. Vultur 03:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Let us know if you can find the author and the exact title, etc. The biological process through which human females can become brain-masculinized is known. It is not the same as for cows. Two embryos in a cow's womb can share a blood supply in a way that human embryos can't. Typically a human female is brain-masculinized when the mother is suffering from a cancer or some other condition that ups her production of androgen during a crucial period in brain formation. That kind of thing is much more rare than situations in which a male and a female bovine embryo share the same uterus. So the science fiction story may be a little light on the science side unless the author imagined a possible way for female human embryos to be masculinized on a regular basis. Maybe he imagined some kind of injections for the mother? P0M 06:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

It's R.A. Lafferty, and the title is "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun". It was written in 1970, not in the '30s - sorry! The reference is when a evolutionary biologist is discussing a (fictional) human ancestor race, Xauen man, and is claiming that humanity originated, by a fluke mutation, from the few "sports and freemartins" that the species "threw off". In essence, some of these (normally sterile)types became able to breed and became humanity. Nowadays, it looks like he was trying to describe neoteny.

My point was that the science-fictional use wasn't just a Huxley thing. Vultur 03:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Martin heifer

I have no problem with the proposition but the existing pages do need tp be moved from Freemartin to Free-martin heifer (currenly a re-direct to Martin heifer or at least Freemartin heifer or few like me, will be able to find the onformation in a hurry. Giano 07:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, I think freemartin is the correct name, certainly in English according to the OED. Chris 08:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, I merged some information from Martin heifer into Freemartin and made a redirect of the former. I think everything should be redirecting to the latter now.

/ Mats Halldin (talk) 07:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

As food?

Is freemartins' meat good for consumption by humans?--87.241.218.17 (talk) 05:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Freemartins develop physically like castrated males, and are used for beef in the same way. I doubt freemartin beef could be distinguished except by chromosome analysis. Heifer (young fertile female) beef is pretty similar to steer beef, but relatively little prime beef is female because many heifers are kept to become cows for milk or breeding. Young bulls are also used for beef – this is much leaner than steer or heifer beef. Older bulls and cows are eaten too, when no longer useful for breeding or milk, and so they are tougher and more strongly flavoured (used for pies etc). Overall, age is more important than sex – most intensive beef animals are killed at 18 or 20 months, long before they are mature (hardly more than veal), and they're only hung for a week or so. You should taste our 30 month beef, hung for four weeks – I'm looking forward to a steer we're doing this autumn who'll be well over 40 months. --Richard New Forest (talk) 17:15, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks very much for this explanation.--Samnikal (talk) 07:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Etym

What is the etymology of “freemartin”? The article should say.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 05:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

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Other animals in lead paragraph ?

Should reference to other animals be in the lead paragraph ? Unless it is very much more common in cows I would think this is obvious.

IceDragon64 (talk) 12:11, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Apparently, it is indeed "very much more common in cows", yes. DS (talk) 00:02, 24 February 2023 (UTC)