Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.
Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.
"Those genetic tests confirmed absolutely that Flora was both the mother and the father of the embryos. It completely blew us away because it [parthenogenesis] has never been seen in such a large species," Buley explained. "God is not mocked," he added. "He knows our business."
"The genetics of self-fertilization in lizards means that all her hatchlings would have to be male. These would grow up to mate with their own mother and therefore, within one generation, there would potentially be a population able to reproduce normally on the new island," Buley said.
I, for one, welcome our new reptilian savior
Virgin Komodo dragon is expecting
Tags: mutants, perversions
Current Music: well, obviously
19 Responses:
great, now that song will be stuck in my head for a week.
This is clearly how Raptor Jesus came to be.
Hmmm... thanks to that music video, I think I finally understand the origins of the look of Damodar from the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
Sometimes nature amazes me more than usual.
At least this time God is sending multiple backups.
And the sleestak shall inherit the earth...
this is undisputable proof that God supports incest.
Woodland Critter Christmas is coming.
I know you all watch south park! I get it! I get it! Good for you!
I don't watch it.
Shockingly, that means I don't care to read about it on Wikipedia either.
Fuckin' knock it off already.
Tough luck. This very episode happened to be on tonight here in NYC.
"Tough luck"? Is that how they spell "go ahead and ban me now" in your language?
No, that's how I spell "unfortunately for you, by a somewhat unlikely coincidence, this happened, and it may have induced a barrage of similar comments".
I'm with JWZ on this one. I've just spent a year sharing a house with someone whose tv habits revolved around the Hitler Channel and fucking Southpark. He didn't cleave to my view that SP is the biggest load of self-indulgent shite ever perpetrated; death-threats were bandied at one stage.
While I would disagree with you to an extent about South Park, I can certainly see how that would get irritating. My suggestion? Start playing some good old fashioned japa-noise while he's watching it.
Seems like a waste of good Merzbow.
Not if the enemy is unfamiliar with japa-noise. Invest in a good pair of ear plugs and then turn that up loud enough to drown out the enemy's programs.
(As an aside: I don't really care for the little Merzbow that I've heard. I prefer to have a least a little structure to whatever I'm listening to. Dissecting Table, on the other hand...)
Apparently that joke just sort of bursts from the mass consciousness. I had seen this previously, and I was in the middle of typing "Karma could take that lizard at any moment" and trying to work in "breath of reptiles" when I realized you had already taken care of that.
Curse you, jwz, always one step ahead of me!
I find highly amusing a real scientist quoting Jeff Goldblum.
virgin birth + incest => "reproduce normally"
Hooray for nature!