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Female Common Mynas Were Heavier, but Males Had Longer Wings and Tails

Common Myna perched on a branch
Research · Anatomy & morphology

A preprint posted on 30 July 2026 reports clear sex differences in body measurements among 540 adult common mynas (Acridotheres tristis) from Pakistan’s Battagram Valley. The fieldwork in 2025 included 300 males and 240 females, with eleven external measurements recorded from each bird.

Females were heavier on average, at 123.40 grams compared with 114.54 grams in males. Males, however, were longer: mean body length was 23.82 centimetres in males and 22.97 centimetres in females.

Males also had greater wingspan, wing length and tail length. Mean wingspan was 35.52 centimetres in males and 32.67 centimetres in females, wing length was 14.49 versus 13.31 centimetres, and tail length was 8.57 versus 8.02 centimetres. The first and second primary-feather measurements also differed between the sexes.

Not every trait showed a sex difference. The analysis did not support clear sex differences in bill measurements, side- or central-toe length, or the third primary-feather measurement. It also did not support clear site-to-site differences in the measured traits within Battagram Valley for either sex.

The result is therefore not a simple case of one sex being larger overall: females were heavier, while males were longer in several structural measurements. Because the study is a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed, the findings should be treated as preliminary.

Sources and image credit

  1. Authorea — Morphometry of the Common myna (Acridotheres tristis) in the Battagram Valley, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, PakistanPrimary preprint, version 1, posted 30 July 2026. Source for the 540-bird sample, field year, eleven traits and reported sex and site comparisons. Not peer reviewed; results are treated as preliminary.
  2. ResearchGate record — Morphometry of the Common myna in the Battagram ValleyBibliographic mirror used to verify the posting date and abstract values when the primary Authorea page was not fully machine-readable.

Image: Tisha Mukherjee — wild Common Myna in Latpanchar, West Bengal, India, 1 April 2024. Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Representative species image; not one of the Battagram study birds. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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Anatomy & morphology

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