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Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
mikesd81 writes "The Washington Post has an article about a team of American and Irish researchers that have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex, the first time that scientists have found the unusual capacity in such an ancient vertebrate species. Their report concludes that sharks can reproduce asexually through the process known as parthenogenesis (the growth and development of an embryo or seed without fertilization by a male). Scientists started investigating after a female hammerhead shark was mysteriously born at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in a tank that housed 3 female sharks. It was originally thought one had stored sperm from a male shark before fertilizing an egg. However, baby shark's genetic makeup perfectly matched one of the females in the tank, with no sign of a male parent."
Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
If male sharks had ST:TNG on DVD they'd be indistinguisable from human male geeks.
Trolling is a art,
They were forced to evolve this ability after all the males were killed in frickin' laser accidents during mating attempts.
... at splashdot.org were just ruled obsolete. Slashdotters, beware ... we're next!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
don't clone dinosaurs using shark DNA.
Finally, proof that Mother Nature never intended males to exist at all.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I bet this bitch shark names an innocent male as the father, and the courts force him to pay $2000 in maintenance every month! Fuck!
"She must be a dyke," I'd say.
"No, that's just wishful thinking," my wingman tells me. "Maybe you should change your socks more often."
Shows him!
the baby should not have been genetically identical to anything in the tank unless its mother was also a parthenogen. parthenogenesis creates a homozygotic offspring that can have any random mix of the two chromosomes the mother carries for each pair. so if the mother has AB, the parthenogenic offspring can have either AA or BB, which is not identical to the mother since the mother has AB. the only way it can be identical is if the mother is also homozygotic and therefore a parthenogen.
No, you shouldn't. Hermaphrodism is the presence of sex organs for both genders. These sharks are all female. They just happen to be able to parthenogenically reproduce.
--AC
My wife does this
Not sure why the kids are black tho
Now we know how mankind really evolved. First there was the virgin birth, then we crawled out of the sea and after a few millenia, started to walk upright.
Er wait, I'm confused.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just a quick note, if you are ever in the Omaha, Nebraska area definitely stop by Henry Doorly Zoo. It's probably the nation's second best zoo behind San Diego's, and the shark tunnel is fantastic. As are the penguins, and the desert dome, and indoor jungle, and... A few winters ago we went to the Zoo and the place was deserted. Was able to just lay down in the Shark Tunnel and watch the sharks swim overhead for about a half hour with no one coming down. Was fantastic. At any rate, also -- as far as the article goes -- I wish someone would have some more explanation for how this works. Kindof freaky.
They should name the baby shark "Jesus." I think that would be kind of funny.
I for one welcome our immaculately conceived virgin-born shark messiah overlords
This is actually really interesting, and makes a lot of sense. Shark's genetics haven't evolved that much from its ancient relatives so this reproduction method would definitely limit variations. But I am curious as to if this is how the great white reproduces. Very little is known about the great whites breeding habits. One of the prevailing theories centers around whale carcasses.
Nobody jumped the shark then?
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
...can go fuck themselves.
For clearing up a common mis-"conception."
And for not making a lame joke about parthenogenesis like I just did.
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
Actually, 'immaculately conceived', in Catholic dogma, refers to the idea that Mary was conceived without Original Sin. 'Virgin birth' is what you're looking for. But it ruins so many jokes... immaculate contraption, etc.
@yg
Mr. Liggett: Alright, Lightman. Maybe you could tell us who first suggested the idea of reproduction without sex.
David Lightman: Umm... Your wife?
Mr. Liggett: Get out, Lightman. Get out.
Teacher: "...And who can tell me the first person to suggest the idea of reproduction without sex?"
Ferris: "Uhm...Your wife?"
Bueller? Bueller?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
By not jumping the shark, the male shark has finally jumped the shark.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I for one welcome our immaculately conceived virgin-born shark messiah overladies
whos to say science wont evolve to point where we can just grow humans in a lab and females become obsolete.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Wow... a few commonly known facts and some "magic" pseudoscience and baseless speculation, and you get a +5 insightful... nice work!
After I read the article I realised that they meant the marine predator; from the headline I thought that they meant lawyers!
No he did not. He got it wrong, and so did Wikipedia. When an object or idea is "conceived" it is called into existence. A person is conceived by the meeting of a sperm and an ovum.
The phrase "the conception of Mary" refers to the event that calls Mary into existence, that is the conception of Mary by her mother and father. It should say "the conception by Mary of Jesus", although that would have all kinds of other implications as, according to the belief, it was God who conceived Jesus, not actually Mary. To be correct syntactically and to be true to the story, I'd say "The miraculous conception of Jesus within Mary".
This is a very commonly misused active tense for the verb conception, but it becomes clear when you think of it from the point of view that "the conception of a person" refers to the point at which that person was called into existence.
I hate printers.
Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
So you've met my ex-wife?
Seriously, imagine the shark husbands; "That's not my pup. Who's the father???"
Or trying to explain this to your parents; "But Mom, I didn't. Really Mom."
And now the quotes, "A female shark needs a male shark, like a flounder needs a bicycle." - "All he's good for is opening jars and lifting heavy things." - "Not tonight, honey. I'm already stuffed."
In some ways, it would suck to be a male shark.
Best regards.
OK... I am an atheist... but this does remind me of a certain story in the bible.
Except the whole virgin birth thing was purely the result of a mistranslation.
It was "young woman", not "virgin".
Of course the nutters can't exactly be honest about it now
Thank you for the English lesson, but in Catholic dogma the "Immaculate Conception" refers to the conception of Mary without original sin. This is quite commonly confused by many with the "Virgin Birth" of Jesus. Catholic dogma views Mary's conception as a miraculous event all by its self and necessary in preparation for the later miraculous birth of Jesus.
Hopefully, you will be more likely to believe that the people at catholic.com were able to get it right.
... the King of the Jaws?
A black hole is where God divided by 0
the sharks were conceived without sex-sin repent, all you fornicating sharks having babies out of wedlock!
Sexual reproduction speeds up the process among complex organisms, but bacteria evolve very quickly without it.
Sure they do. Google for "Bacterial Conjugation". Of course, they don't have genitalia like we do, but they manage anyway. Pretty much all bacteria that have been studied in any depth have been found to use conjugation to exchange DNA. There's even "bacterial porn" online, videos of the conjugation process.
Actually, most of them only engage in sex occasionally, Mostly they reproduce by cloning (i.e., dividing). When they have several populations of clones intermingling, they produce lots of random mixtures of the different populations' genes in a big orgy of conjugation. Natural selection then decides which of these mixtures deserve to survive. The result is the same sort of pooling of beneficial genes that happens in us multi-cellular organisms during sex.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No no no - its all good.
If a chick WANTS to have a kid on their own, they should be able to, without dragging some guy into a long term support commitment by saying 'Guess wot ? Im pregnant'.
If you want a kid together, you still can, and if she wants her own - she can, and no child support liability for a kid that you never asked for. She would only have herself to blame in this case.
See the Komodo Dragon tale The tale explains the concept of parthenogenesis, which is simply put, "virginal birth". There are two interesting types in this : 1. Cloning, where the offspring is genetically identical to the parent 2. Selfing. where a female may produce two sets of chromosomes that mate. One set would behave like a sperm.
For the record, I asked my brother -- who has a degree in linguistics -- about this, and he said the following:
0 0724#mistranslation
1. http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/virgin.html?2
Parthenos means "virgin" in Greek. The site author says that it's
Hebrew equivalent "almah" means only young woman and not virgin.
Hebrew isn't my specialty so I can't speak with authority, but I have
heard there is debate on this. I will, however, give a cultural
explanation. A young woman (whether almah means explicitly virgin or
not) would almost always be a virgin in Hebrew society, because of the
obvious penalties for promiscuity, i.e. being shamed and then stoned
to death.
His Proverbs 30:18-19 example could be turned against him. Again, in
Hebrew society, young women were usually virgins. So it could easily
be translated "the way of a man with a virgin". As for the harem
example, perhaps the semantic range of this word allows the meaning of
"young woman" and sometimes "virgin". That is beside the point, in my
mind. Women in a harem weren't virgins, but they were sort of
"married" to the king in a way. Again, I think the cultural argument
of the purity of young Hebrew women holds up. The Greek alternative
word "neanis" presented does nothing to uphold his argument in the
face of the cultural argument. Remember, we must consider not only
LINGUISTIC, but also CULTURAL evidence and their combined
implications. So I feel his using this sole vocabulary item attempting
to invalidate the virgin birth is not only misguided but a weak
argument. In archaeology and history one looks at language, culture,
genetics, artifacts, and many other forms of evidence to see if they
all point in a similar direction.
Later in this article he states that this Isaiah passage doesn't
specifically mention or prophesy the virgin birth. It is a fact that
many OT passages with prophecy don't actually directly state what they
are prophesying. There are others such as "I brought my son out of
Egypt" which may have meant something different when they were written
and were reapplied to Christ. I know this is a hard issue to accept
sometimes.
He also states that the earliest "Christian" sources don't say
anything about the virgin birth. This probably comes because he may
believe the Gospel writings came much later than Christians say they
did. Many people say this because they don't want to believe that the
early sources, close to the time of Christ, made such extravagant
claims about Jesus. However, there is large evidence that the Gospels
and other NT books were all written within 100 years of his death. He
also says pagan sources had virgin birth examples. Pagan sources have
all kinds of strange thinking, but we don't find all these included in
the Bible. The fact that the virgin birth also happens to be found in
pagan ideas doesn't mean they ripped it off from pagans. Pagans also
had fertility cults and temple prostitutes, but Corinthians (1 Cor 6)
warns Christians against these pagan practices, as well as against
meat sacrificed to idols.
There were certain false teachings, like Gnosticism, which did
includes features from Greco-Buddhism. These are some of the ideas
found in the Da Vinci Code. Also, strangely enough, many of the
mainstream "pop theology" found in stores today includes ideas which
seem to have sprung from New Age thinking. This doesn't nullify
Christianity, in my mind. It just means a smart, discerning person
checks their sources and verifies if what they read elsewhere fits
with the Bible's truth. You and I already know that many "Christians"
don't verify things, and just blindly stupidly believe whatever
nonsense comes their way. James warns against these "double-minded"
people. And I think anyone is at risk unless they learn discernment.
That's my take on this, in a short way of writing it.