Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 126 posts

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#61

Post by MisterBastahrd »

nocman wrote: post #43
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not share his Faith, but I understand his views to be a Leap of Faith. While science is nice and all but as humans taking such leaps and trusting other people despite evidence to the contrary, is every day business, is it not? Of course it is rather hard to believe that such a vast majority of people take such Leaps on not just ONE person, but a whole chain of people spanning over 2000 years!! But he must have h…

No. My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness account…

You believe that the accounts of the bible are true because they're in the bible. Gotcha.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#62

Post by vorg »

kijin wrote: post #11
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 wh…

> Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait

Given that mammal females are XX and can only parthenogenesize females, never males, because of the lack of any Y chromosome, perhaps that's why mammals don't reproduce asexually frequently compared to ZW birds and other ZW animals.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#63

Post by carlob »

vorg wrote: post #59
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.…

> Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. If the female is ZW, then I'd expect three possible choices -- unviable WW, female ZW, and male ZZ -- because both Z and W are present in the female.

Apparently WW can be a viable female:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9139000/913...

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#64

Post by fsiefken »

xivzgrev wrote: post #46
ebiester wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then wouldn't that person be a liar? All and all Jesus said he was the Lord. So I think it is actually rather tight - he was correct, he was incorrect and aware of it (liar), or he was incorrect and not aware of it (lunatic).

That is assuming the rendition and interpretation of his words concerning him being the Lord in the gospels written decades after his death on the cross are correct. Perhaps he was merely a charismatic wisdom teacher. Even so there is a field of study (transpersonal psychology) where mystical experiences are not necessarily seen as deviant and a sign of disease. So the mystical union with the Godhead might not necessarily be lunacy. Perhaps this got understood by the leading intellectuals in the mythological imagery we have concerning Christ and it's meaning for humanity as the platonic Man.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#65

Post by radicalbyte »

cygx wrote: post #14

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 l…

I have two female guinea pigs and they do exactly the same. When they're in heat it's humping time.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#66

Post by Htsthbjig »

I have my own terrarium inside the home with everything enclosed from outside. It includes LED lighting.

Somewhat Aphids appeared and created havoc inside. They reproduce in so many different ways, sexually, asexually or mixed that is really hard to eradicate them(in a natural way).

In the end I decided to use ladybugs to control them. Now I need something that controls ladybugs too.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#67

Post by colin_mccabe »

_nedR wrote: post #37

As a non-bio person, I wonder what's the evolutionary reason for this not happening in more species. Sure, sexual reproduction is the way to go if you have the option, but wouldn't a wouldn't a mother capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction have higher chances of propagating her genes than a mother who is only capable of sexual reproduction. (I know I shouldn't be playing these mind games with zero knowledge…

wouldn't a wouldn't a mother capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction have higher chances of propagating her genes than a mother who is only capable of sexual reproduction?

A lot of animals are social. In that case, finding a mate of the opposite sex is not really a problem. In a herd of cows, or a flock of birds, there will be both males and females. Animals that don't live in groups often have mating calls or attractive scents, or various other ways of attracting a mate.

And then there's organisms that just do reproduce asexually when necessary, like the snakes in the article. Or like grass, which only reproduces sexually when it gets long enough to "go to seed" and otherwise just spreads asexually.

The question of why sexual reproduction exists at all is a very deep question in evolutionary theory. You shouldn't feel bad about asking it, because a lot of people have, and come up with some very different answers. The Red Queen is an interesting book about this topic.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#68

Post by cbd1984 »

baddox wrote: post #38
mgkimsal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4th alliterative option is 'Legend'. Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend Lunatic and Legend are far far far more likely options, which require no appeal to supernatural claims.

The three L argument is aimed only at people who believe in the historicity of Jesus, as well as that he was a great spiritual leader, but who belief that there are also other paths to spiritual enlightenment or salvation. It obviously carries no weight to people who don't believe Jesus was a historical figure, or who believe he was a liar or a lunatic.

From what I understand, 'legend' means there is a kernel of history there, but it's been so crusted over with stories that it's impossible to recover. The word 'myth' is used when it's all fiction.

So the 'legend' position would be "There was a heretical Judean Jew named Joshua son of Joseph who may well have given a sermon on some mount and was very likely crucified, but beyond that we are in no position to say anything. It's been too long, the records are too poor, and too many people with motivation to lie have had a chance to spread tales."

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#69

Post by xerophyte12932 »

nocman wrote: post #43
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not share his Faith, but I understand his views to be a Leap of Faith. While science is nice and all but as humans taking such leaps and trusting other people despite evidence to the contrary, is every day business, is it not? Of course it is rather hard to believe that such a vast majority of people take such Leaps on not just ONE person, but a whole chain of people spanning over 2000 years!! But he must have h…

No. My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness account…

I apologize if what I said offended you in anyway, but in my opinion you still need that leap of faith to believe that not only all those eye witnesses were telling the truth, but also that the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were. But frankly all this discussion is moot considering that if you believe in an omnipotent god, all other things should come naturally. I mean if a Being can create the entire universe from nothing (via the big bang or otherwise), then creating a Y-chromosome out of nothing is a very small feat for such a being.

Now on the contrary, if someone chooses not to believe in such a god, then I don't see how you can make them believe virgin births or the integrity of 2000 year old eye witness accounts. Especially considering that history is full of people who used religion to serve their own agenda (recent example: Al Qaeda) thus giving religion as a whole, a bad name.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#70

Post by frik »

graycat wrote: post #19

Ah, apparently the BBC forgot about the scene in the first movie Jurassic Park !

Why was it downvoted? It is in some way relevant.

I remember in Jurassic Park 1 the premise was that the dinos reprocuded themselves because the contained parts of an African frog DNA, a species that needs only females to reproduce.

Post reply on HN