Virgin Birth

It has been known before that bony fish, bees and ants can reproduce without having sexual contact with the males. Now scientists also confirm that female sharks and lizards can also do the same. Richard Gibson, Curator at the Zoological Society of London said that Parthenogenesis has been described before in about 70 species of vertebrates, but it has always been regarded to be very unusual or abnormal phenomenon. The Greek calls this type of reproduction “Parthenogenesis”, a pregnancy that occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell. Scientist at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska had produced evidence from studying a captive shark delivery a pub in 2001 despite having had no contact with a male. And in 2006, the Chester Zoo and the London Zoo in the United Kingdom also reported that two female Komodor dragons having produced offspring without any male contact. The genetic make-up of the offspring of this kind of virgin birth only comes from the mother. Now that we know that virgin birth is much more widespread and common phenomenon of life on earth than we previously thought. We should then go back and look again at the bible story about the virgin birth. Maybe it is not as unusual at all that “asexual reproduction” can happen to human female as well.

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