The Komodo Dragon's Tale...Virgin Birth??

[and-justice-for-all]

http://richarddawkins.net/article,452,The-Komodo-Dragons-Tale,Richard-Dawkins

An adult Komodo dragon, three yards long and a voracious carnivore, could be mistaken for a decent-sized dinosaur. Komodo dragons are actually giant monitor lizards (Varanus komodoensis) and they have not gone the way of the dinosaurs. Not yet at least, but they were one of the endangered species visited by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine in their enchanting Last Chance to See. They are confined to a handful of Indonesian islands, including Komodo itself and also Flores, home of the recently extinct Homo floresiensis on which they, and an even larger species of giant lizard, now extinct, perhaps preyed (if, that is, H.floresiensis was a real species of miniature human at all). Komodo dragons still eat humans when they get the chance. It has been suggested that the Komodo dragon is well named as the real-life origin of all our dragon myths, and it is certainly plausible that Chinese sailors would have brought back awestruck tales of them. They don't breathe fire but their mouths are so riddled with festering bacteria that one bite is fatal. Their preferred method of hunting is to deliver that fatal bite, then follow the prey around until it dies from the resulting bacterial infection, then eat it. Komodo dragons are topical as I write (Christmas 2006) because of an interesting paper in Nature (Vol 444, 28th December 2006) presenting evidence that they can reproduce parthenogenetically ('virgin birth'). This is the subject of my Tale.....

[sam sarrha]

1. all the offspring will ve female..

[Uroboros]

2. Male actually

n/t

[sam sarrha]

3. sorry cant be male, she doesn't have any Male DNA, she just combined to ovums to get a double strand

she essentially cloned herself, fish can do it.. and aphids.. that is why there are always so many of them..

[Baclava]

4. Hail Satan!

It's a Woodland Critter Christmas