A new hypothesis on how sexual reproduction evolved


Man, to think I took a class that spent the whole semester talking about the evolution of sexual reproduction. It looked a lot like panel one, but I was never exposed to this brilliant hypothesis:Pfffft, take that, Muller’s ratchet!

Now, the real question is if I’m brave enough to email this to my professor. Maybe after graduation…

Comments

  1. says

    It is a rather good thing that the new appendage was a penis, and not something like a foot or nose.Because with the same logic, things might get reallllly awkward.

  2. says

    Now that you mention your professor, don’t you spend too much time with your blog and boobquake activism ? A PhD isn’t a joke ! How is it going ?

  3. says

    Despite the press claiming that I’m a grad student, I’m actually not starting my PhD until the fall.That being said, I’m kind of an overachiever. I’m not happy unless I’m overly busy.

  4. says

    God luck with your PhD then and work hard.. or maybe not so hard.I was a bit like you but now I’m about 20 years older and well <insert depressive=”” here=”” thoughts=””></insert>

  5. says

    well, there’s this german comic where all people have reeeaaallly long noses… and in one of them the writer draws a “standard” bobmshell, who of course gets together with the main character; whom she, in one bed-scene, asks to “do that thing with your nose”sooo….yeah… awkward :-p

  6. says

    The cartoon contradicts the statement that the female sex preceded the male in natural history–the logic of which I’ve never accepted. How can “female” be a scientifically meaningful term before the existence of males? Am I quibbling pointlessly over semantics? Do I misunderstand the professional jargon of scientists, which often restricts or expands definitions of everyday words in eccentric ways? By contrast, I accept the logic of the statement that all human fetuses are female until hormones turn about half of them male. But for whatever length of prehistoric time only one biological gender existed on earth, how can it be called female rather than “neuter”? I’m just asking.

  7. Zenlite says

    I would imagine that researchers, being modern humans, would have been starting from a cognitive standpoint of masculinity and femininity as they exist in the human race. Since, in the human race, masculinity is a specialized addendum to the otherwise normal course of fetal development one would need to view femininity as the baseline when backtracking into a discussion of other species. This would be particularly relevant when discussing species that can be either sexual or asexual like a type of lake snail I was reading about recently. This particular snail is typically hermaphroditic but, from time to time, a female (in this case one specifically not carrying the male genes) will be born that reproduces asexually through fission. The article mainly dealt with how the asexual snails would reproduce like crazy then all get wiped out by a single parasite that had learned to exploit their gene structure and that protection from such predation was likely a key reason for the advancement of sexuality as a reproduction scheme.Anyways, my point was that these snails are female, genetically, even though they reproduce through fission.

  8. Twewi says

    I’m no biologist, so maybe this is really stupid, but it seems to me that if you had a parent passing on all of its DNA, you would either have only one parent passing on genes and far less diversity, or the amount of genetic information would double each generation, and I just don’t see how that could work…

  9. says

    Sadly, not much has changed. <insert b.=”” bill=”” bryant=”” catholic=”” clarence=”” clinton=”” d.=”” david=”” duchovny=”” dwight=”” edwards=”” eisenhower=”” elliot=”” every=”” gingrich=”” giuliani=”” haggard=”” here=”” james=”” jesse=”” jimmy=”” john=”” johnson=”” joke=”” kennedy=”” kilpatrick=”” kobe=”” kwame=”” letterman=”” limbaugh=”” mark=”” mcgreevey=”” nearly=”” newt=”” preist=”” rudy=”” rush=”” sanford=”” spitzer=”” swaggar=”” ted=”” thomas=”” tiger=”” vitter=”” woods=”” yndon=””> Maami Wata</insert>

  10. Guest says

    lmao if your professor has any sense of humor AT ALL he will think this is great!

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