I came across an astonishing fact about the female Komodo dragon, and was surprised it hadn't been publicly announced with all the bells, banners and general pomp which I imagined would surround such a finding... Hold your breath now.... I hope I haven't built this up too much..... but...... female Komodo dragons are able to provide virgin births.....!!!!!
Unbelievably it's true, this finding came about when females kept in zoo's deprived of males still laid eggs, and surprisingly they hatched! The fascinating thing is that these offspring aren't clones either, i.e. they aren't genetically identical to their mother, so where do they get there genetic differences? God?... I think not. Normally a male sperm and female egg contain half of the genetic information of each parent, when the sperm joins the egg an embryo is formed with a complete number of chromosomes which is then capable of growing. In the female Komodo Dragons' case, the half chromosome it donates toward the egg duplicates itself into a second identical version. The eggs are all different due to their half chromosome being comprised of a mix of the different "possible" types of a single gene present in the female chromosome pair. In agreement with Darwin's 'adapt or die' (paraphrasing - sorry) philosophy, this enables the continued reign of the Komodo dragon. The mother can only lay eggs which hatch into males (in virgin births that is), and hence the mothers can mate with their male offspring and continue to breed, survive and repopulate a new environment - if not a bit incestuously...
Unbelievably it's true, this finding came about when females kept in zoo's deprived of males still laid eggs, and surprisingly they hatched! The fascinating thing is that these offspring aren't clones either, i.e. they aren't genetically identical to their mother, so where do they get there genetic differences? God?... I think not. Normally a male sperm and female egg contain half of the genetic information of each parent, when the sperm joins the egg an embryo is formed with a complete number of chromosomes which is then capable of growing. In the female Komodo Dragons' case, the half chromosome it donates toward the egg duplicates itself into a second identical version. The eggs are all different due to their half chromosome being comprised of a mix of the different "possible" types of a single gene present in the female chromosome pair. In agreement with Darwin's 'adapt or die' (paraphrasing - sorry) philosophy, this enables the continued reign of the Komodo dragon. The mother can only lay eggs which hatch into males (in virgin births that is), and hence the mothers can mate with their male offspring and continue to breed, survive and repopulate a new environment - if not a bit incestuously...
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