Virgin birth expected for Komodo dragon at Xmas time
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, 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.
“Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way,” Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.
He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.
Ah, the wonder of it all…
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.
“Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way,” Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.
He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.
Ah, the wonder of it all…
Posted: Thu - December 21, 2006 at 07:10 AM