The mystery of the color-

changing hen
T. Nandakumar

Nature's magic: The hen that changes color.

Thiruvananthapuram city of Kerala state from India:

What's the color of your hen? A question as simple as
that will leave Selvaraj fumbling for an answer.

The small-time farmer is yet to figure out the real color of

the hen strutting about on the premises of his house at
Mukkola near Vizhinjam here.

The six-year-old bird is now a celebrity of sorts for its

capacity to change color periodically from black to white
and back. Scientists are studying the hen that has
already changed color four times. It was after the first
egg-laying period that Mr. Selvaraj and family noticed the
black hen gradually changing to white without completely
shedding its feathers. In about a year, it became
completely white.
The new white hen continued to lay eggs, and in a year it
started turning black. It was then that Mr. Selvaraj
decided to inform the Zoology Department of the
University of Kerala about the puzzling event.

A team of researchers led by CSIR emeritus scientist,

Zoology Department and Centre for Bioinformatics, Dr.
Oommen V. Oommen, examined the hen in 2008. The
team included R. Dileep Kumar, K. Ramachandran and L.
Divya. They tagged the bird and collected blood samples
for investigation, and continued to observe the hen that
was superficially black with patches of white underneath.

The bird turned black and white in 2009 and almost white
in 2010. The blood samples collected in 2008, 2009 and
2010 were analyzed for several hormones, including
estrogen (female sex hormone). The team also consulted
Chandana Haldar from the Benares Hindu University and
other scientists.

The color change in the bird was found to coincide with

an abnormal increase in the level of estrogen, peaking at
almost six times more than normal for a hen. An
experiment conducted by Professor Thapliyal (Dr.
Oommen's mentor) of the BHU in the 1960s had
established that estrogen can inhibit pigmentation in
females.

Though it is natural of high concentration estrogen to

inhibit the color pigmentation process to turn the bird's
black plumage to white, the reversal process remains a
mystery to scientists. “It will require detailed genetic
studies to unravel the science of this recurrent color
change,” Dr. Oommen said.
“It is definitely a freak phenomenon. What we have
observed is that the feathers are changing color and not
molting” he said.

The phenomenon is not unheard of in birds. There were

reports of a normal blue Andalusian hen in Kansas, U.S.,
turning white in 1917-18. But the bird never returned to
its original color.