http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2008/10/sharks-actually.html
The article talked about the virgin birth of the new shark, and gave insight into what the author thinks might have occured, an idea that is very unscientific in the concrete, but in the abstract i could agree with. The idea is female sharks gave virgin births due to the fact that sex was very violent, and could kill them. It seems to me it is one of the two most likely reasons why sharks would have the asexual reproduction. The other is in a species with a lack of male specimens, probably long ago due to shark pack wars, or disease, the females needed to kick off the start of their species again.
If we examine the concept though, they are the same principle. The principle being the sharks reproduced to fill a need. The sharks hated the sex for it being to violent, so therefore evolved to not need to have sex. Or, the sharks didn't even have the mates, so evolved to a point where they had minimalistic need for them.
The shark also mentioned interesting facts, like the sharks invented internal insemination, that the species is over 400 million years old, and as far as scientists know, only one pup can be made with virgin births.
1 comment:
This is actually a really interesting article! We always hear about evolution in school and how animals evolve to adapt to their environment, but I've never heard of any animal evolving during our lifetime, and so it's really interesting to experience this evolution as it is currently happening, as opposed to being told about it from a text book.
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