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Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

bbc.com

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Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#11

Post by kijin »

philh wrote: post #6

I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring. Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system - humans have XY chromosomes, with XX female and XY male. Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. But WW turns out to be viable, and ZZ either doesn't happen, or isn't viable.…

Yeah, I found that surprising as well. Most of the other species mentioned in the article (other than the whiptail lizard) produce males when they reproduce asexually, perhaps so that they can return to sexual reproduction once the males are mature. Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait, but maybe it's too early to generalize too much on the basis of what is already highly exceptional.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#12

Post by olavk »

danabramov wrote: post #8
dangero wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that the meaning was lost in translation?

That's a very common argument, indeed. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus >The word "virgin" in Christian translations is disputed. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, "but has nothing to do with whether she is a virgin", and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. Th…

Note though that the ambiguity is in the translation of Isiah, the prophet in the Old Testament, NOT in the translation of the gospels where it is unambiguous that Mary was a virgin in the sense that she had not had sex with a man. However the reason the virgin birth is important for Matthew is because it is supposed to fulfill the prophecy in Isiah. Which in turn indicates that the story about the virgin birth probably originated among Greek-speaking Jews.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#13

Post by ebiester »

fnayr wrote: post #10
georgespencer wrote: post #3

I recall Josh McDowell citing the virgin birth as one of the defining reasons for believing Christ was the son of God. I quite enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' take on Parthenogenesis: "Even if I grant you that, you still have all your work ahead of you to prove that he was divine." Things like this add to that workload. Fascinating and festive and very HN.

His main argument was actually the Lord Liar Lunatic one, where you need to prescribe one of those descriptions to him (He argues).

That argument came from C.S. Lewis, and the primary counter I know is that it assumes "lunatic" is a binary condition -- someone is either delusional or not. We, today, know that this isn't the case. There are people who have truly bizarre beliefs that don't otherwise hinder logical functioning.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#14

Post by cygx »

Relevant Wikipedia quote [1] about New Mexico whiptail lizards:

An interesting aspect to reproduction in these asexual lizards is that mating behaviors are still seen, although the populations are all female. One female plays the role played by the male in closely related species, and mounts the female that is about to lay eggs. This behaviour is due to the hormonal cycles of the females, which cause them to behave like males shortly after laying eggs, when levels of progesterone are high, and to take the female role in mating before laying eggs, when estrogen dominates.

It blew my mind when I first stumbled upon it:

There's a species of lesbian lizards that reproduce by cloning!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Reptiles

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#17

Post by gress »

ebiester wrote: post #13
fnayr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His main argument was actually the Lord Liar Lunatic one, where you need to prescribe one of those descriptions to him (He argues).

That argument came from C.S. Lewis, and the primary counter I know is that it assumes "lunatic" is a binary condition -- someone is either delusional or not. We, today, know that this isn't the case. There are people who have truly bizarre beliefs that don't otherwise hinder logical functioning.

By 'people', I presume you mean all of us.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#20

Post by SilasX »

happyscrappy wrote: post #5
georgespencer wrote: post #3

I recall Josh McDowell citing the virgin birth as one of the defining reasons for believing Christ was the son of God. I quite enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' take on Parthenogenesis: "Even if I grant you that, you still have all your work ahead of you to prove that he was divine." Things like this add to that workload. Fascinating and festive and very HN.

The Hebrew word for young girl was very close to the word virgin, there was only a subtle difference in the spelling.

Not surprising. The German word for virgin is ... youngwoman (Jungfrau).
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