While I’m in a mini talk-about-science mode, have a look at the female hammerhead who didn’t need a male (Is anyone else bothered by the way these news articles never provide a link to the scientific article being quoted? I’ve had a cursory look at Biology Letters and can’t find it. This bugs me because I can’t accept it on the word of a journalist; I need to see the data. And I’ll forget by tomorrow to have a look for the published article again.)

Parthenogenesis, the somewhat sci-fi process of asexual reproduction, even in vertebrates doesn’t particularly surprise me². What does surprise me is that they didn’t ask DTB for a quote³…

¹ Or is it the other way round?

² But it makes me think again of why we (as in the generic we) evolved to require sexual reproduction, why parthogenesis doesn’t happen more often, and what have those “Red Queen” proponents been up?

³ For P’s benefit…