Go Flora!

Very excited by developments at the Chester Zoo, in England.  Flora, an 8 year old Komodo dragon, has reproduced all on her own.  Way to go, Flora!  After several months gestating, her eggs have recently hatched, although she never had any sort of contact with a male Komodo dragon.  This ability to clone oneself, called parthenogenesis, is quite common in the insect world, but has never been so clearly demonstrated before by Komodo dragons (which are very large lizards, at the top of the food chain).

Paternity tests show that while the young are not exact clones of the mother, there is no genetic input from a father.  Staff at the zoo are referring to Flora as the mother, and the father.

What is unknown is whether this is a recent evolutionary development in the world of Komodo dragons, or a latent ability which can be resorted to under restrictive conditions, such as being locked up in a zoo, or isolated on some Indonesian island. 

In any event, Flora has shown the world, once again, that we tend to underestimate the power of nature.