A surprising number of animals can reproduce without sex

Thomson Reuters

Yes, you read that right.

Virgin births are a thing, and they've been happening for millennia in some animals.

It's something called parthenogenesis, which basically just means reproduction without fertilization. The mother provides both sets of the DNA necessary to create an embryo, which is typically female.

Here are the animals that are capable of having offspring that's genetically all theirs (spoiler alert: humans aren't there quite yet).

The most recent case of this is has been happening at an aquarium in Queensland, Australia. A female leopard shark has had three female babies all on her own.

Reuters

Source: Reef HQ Great Barrier Reef Aquarium

At first, people thought that virgin births happened only in extreme environments, when animals felt pressure to perpetuate their species. That includes animals in captivity, like a python at a Louisville Zoo that had 6 babies in 2012 without ever coming in contact with a male python.

Flickr/Chad Sparkes

Source: BBC

But scientists have figured out that animals in the wild can also have virgin births. Back in 1966, scientists discovered that wild whiptail lizards were capable of making their own female offspring.

Flickr/Mechanoid Dolly

Source: Scientific American

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