A group of Amazonian ants have evolved an extremely unusual social system: They are all female and reproduce via cloning. Though their sexual organs have virtually disappeared, they have also gained some extraordinary abilities.University of Arizona biologist Anna Himler orginally began studying the ants, called Mycocepurus smithii, because they had incredible success as farmers. Many breeds of ant keep domesticated "farms" where they breed various kinds of fungus for nourishment. But Mycocepurus smithii was able to breed fungus far more successfully, and in greater varieties, than other ants Himler had encountered.
As she and her team studied the insects, they realized there were no male ants anywhere to be found. Himler told the BBC that it's possible the ants evolved so as "not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction."
That is kind of amazing. How much you want to bet this is what anti-feminists imagine we feminists want to be able to do?
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How much you want to bet this is what anti-feminists imagine we feminists want to be able to do?
Um... I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
Yeah, I feel like snide tangential comments like this hurt the integrity of the article. I thought it was an interesting piece and the last sentence just kind of threw me off. Yes, anti-feminists sucks, but let's not drag them into this awesome science article, it's kind of an unnecessary reminder.
Agreed. Its just juvenile.
Its true though. It sounds more like youre empathizing with the wrong side.
"Snide tangential comment"? Why do you read feministing at all then, when this sort of witty commentary is all but expected from our editors? This isn't Digg or Reddit where links are just posted and not remarked upon (by the poster) If you want science articles posted with commentary that "hurt the integrity of the article", then I suggest you follow a science news website. I read feministing exactly for the fact that the editors read things and then post them here and make some sort of link to feminism (often with funny little remarks). You are supposed to read the last sentence and be like "haha, anti-feminists do think we just hate men and want to go start our own colonies" and then move on with your life.
Oops, its supposed to read 'without commentary'.
Also, she even posted it under humour, she was trying to be funny. Even if it wasn't the most funny thing ever, calling her juvenile and snide is a bit ridiculous.
...because feminists are supposed to be humorless, I guess.
......and never tread on the tender egos of privileged men that don't mind feminist articles but would like them to be self-contained within the patriarchal system so as not to scare them too much.
Certain non-feminists I know WOULD think we want this on some level.
I thought Samhita's comment was funny. The intensity and negativity of these boards is really turning me off.
Um... I'm pretty sure she's not wrong and that she's joking.
Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
-Pat Robertson
Of course, that's just from one person, but the sentiment is out there.
Yeah, I actually read an entire article on this about three years ago while reading about chromosomes. Some paranoid guy rambling about how the Y chromosome was disappearing, and because of sperm banks now and cloning in the future, women weren't going to need men anymore to continue the species. Terrifying...
And then there's this crap: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4725121&page=1
About the actual article, this is pretty cool stuff, I wonder if the improved farming ability is in any way linked to the fact that the population is all female, that they are all genetically the same, or a combination?
No, that's pretty much the standard for ant, bee, and wasp communal species (that they are very similar genetically).
The article says they farm better than the other ant species, not that they're the only ones who farm.
Actually, the reason why ants and other hymnoptera like bees, termites, etc. work so well together has to do with the theory of kin selection which states that an individual is expected to sacrifice for other individuals based on their coefficient of genetic relatedness (or how large a proportion of genes they share). This is because those with whom they share their genes will reproduce and therefore pass on their genes indirectly. This is always the case with ants and other species that reproduce using a haploid method (rather than diploid like we do)...or something like that.
But this is especially fascinating since they are actually cloning themselves. I didn't know that went on. Pretty cool.
Its like this article:
http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070223/women_chimps_found_making_spears_to_hunt_preys-id-102965.html
where young female chimps are making weapons to hunt
Crashhooligan's answer was quite wonderful! I just wanted to add that organisms who reproduce asexually can generally do it a lot quicker, since all of the individuals can directly make their own offspring (rather than needing two individuals to create offspring).
Also, and this is a little technical, but asexuality tends to appear in conditions that are relatively stable. This is because stable conditions are the only ones that can support asexuality (because the constant gene mixing doesn't happen, and thus asexual species are less able to cope with change). However, because asexual species can create offspring so much more efficiently, they tend to do very well when conditions allow for them, possibly even better than sexual species.
It's actually not that uncommon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in some invertebrate animal species (e.g. water fleas, aphids, some bees, some Phasmida, some scorpion species, and parasitic wasps), and vertebrates (e.g. some reptiles, fish, and, very rarely, birds and sharks) and this type of reproduction has been induced artificially in other species.
And don't forget, there's aleast one documented case of this happening with a human.
Uh, what?
The virgin birth is mythology. Hardly a documented case. Derail threads elsewhere.
I assumed Joe was making a joke.
I didn't. I inferred he meant to stir shit up the minute I read his first comment.
If I'm wrong, I apologize.
I interpreted it that way too.
The virgin birth is mythology. Hardly a documented case. Derail threads elsewhere.
1. The comment I made was tongue-in-cheek.
2. Mythology does not mean fictional.
3. While the documented case I am referring to is questionable on scientific grounds, both in the way the case was documented and how it's been preserved since the original documentation, it's still documented. I personally think the documentation's very questionability makes it a perfectly apt form of ironic inference in this instance.
4. My comment was topical, because it kept in spirit with the idea of Parthenogenesis as a possible form of human reproduction, even though it was meant tongue-in-cheek.
I didn't. I inferred he meant to stir shit up the minute I read his first comment.
If I'm wrong, I apologize.
You're wrong on so many different levels it's not even funny. (That's called deadpan humour.)
Sorry to out-pedant you, but any mammal born through parthenogenesis would necessarily have to be female as there's nowhere for a Y chromosome to come from.
I actually did give that some thought. Mary could have been XXY allowing for an XY, XXY, or XX offspring, as a pure point of theory. Not that I honestly think that it would be as simple as all that.
The offspring of a parthenogenic event inherit a single, duplicated sex chromosome, which means XX or YY, and YY isn't viable. This is actually part of why it is useful in some reptile groups.
If Mary had been XXY, 0th century doctors probably would have classified her as a boy, what with the penis, testicles and all.
That's exactly what I was thinking, but I seem to remember that there's one version of XXY that does present as female, although I think they either can't reproduce or need medical intervention to reproduce.
Transgender Jesus?
(I'd argue, besides, that that particular case would technically be cross-species reproduction, not parthenogenesis, with half the genetic material being attributed to God (or, if I'm in a particularly sacriligious mood, the archangel Gabriel) . . . that is of course, assuming it's not a cloning or an amoeba-like splitting on God's part, and only surrogate motherhood on Mary's. Otherwise the equally-documented divinity of her offspring would be one hell of a spontaneous mutation.)
No. Parthenogenesis would be Mary giving birth to a genetic clone of herself. Giving birth to anything other than a genetic clone is not parthenogenesis.
Um. That depends on the method of parthenogenesis. It's not all clones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis
I stand corrected.
Thanks for explaining. Because my lady-brain can't comprehend the various subtleties of humour.
P.S. The man-hating/man-erasing trope doesn't come out of nowhere, and even the most basic [mis]understanding of feminism serves to highlight this (Read: feminists are man-hating, bra-burning, hairy-legged, amazonian, ugly, et al), so you suggesting the OP is WAY off base without any sort of argument to support your assertion comes off as either exceptionally privileged, dismissive, naive, trollish or a delicious combination of the above.
So pardon me for my secondary inference(that's what we call sarcasm, a highly nuanced form of humour).
Thanks for explaining. Because my lady-brain can't comprehend the various subtleties of humour.
Lady-brain? No, people incapable of understanding the subtleties of humour aren't delineated by sex. You obviously suffer from an abnormality that is separate and unrelated to your sex.
P.S. The man-hating/man-erasing trope doesn't come out of nowhere, and even the most basic [mis]understanding of feminism serves to highlight this (Read: feminists are man-hating, bra-burning, hairy-legged, amazonian, ugly, et al), so you suggesting the OP is WAY off base
I said I was pretty sure her conclusion was wrong, no emotion. You're emphasis on changing it to "WAY off base" gives it an emotional meaning that was not present in my response. Please stop doing that.
without any sort of argument to support your assertion
I gave just as much evidence supporting my conclusion that she was wrong as she gave when making her conclusion, which was none.
comes off as either exceptionally privileged,
This response seems to be used by posters that don't like a different point of view from theirs' on this forum. I got news for you, having an opinion isn't privileged.
dismissive,
Perhaps the response was dismissive, but the OP's statement was dismissive as well.
naive,
And once again, we get back to the "if your opinion isn't the same as mine, you're wrong because you just don't know enough" schtick. Once again, just because you don't agree with a person's point of view does not make it automatically wrong. Nor does it mean that the person who holds the offending point of view suffer from a lack of knowledge that you hold.
trollish
Trolls use ad hominem arguments. I've never used an ad hominem when trying to argue against a particular conclusion, however I think you meant your initial response to be an ad hominem against me. So technically, I'm leaning towards you being the troll here.
or a delicious combination of the above.
So pardon me for my secondary inference(that's what we call sarcasm, a highly nuanced form of humour).
I'll pardon you if you'll stop with the ad hominems.
Seriously? "WAY off base" is a claim about the emotional content of a proposition? I've always thought if you describe a claim as "way off base" that just means it's very far from the truth or has no facual grounding.
If you go back to my initial response to the OP you will see I never used the words "WAY off base." Chelsa's characterization of my response changes the meaning with an emotional component. If Chelsa wanted to just quote me without changing my posts emotional content, Chelsa could have done that.
Since when does "way off base" contain an emotional component? This is a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.
Since when does "way off base" contain an emotional component? This is a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.
There is an emotional difference between "WAY off base" and "way off base." The difference is in emphasis. Try saying saying it out loud. By stressing WAY it gives the comment an emotion of derision, it's not a simple disagreement, it's also an emotional attack of ridicule.
Further the change from "I'm pretty sure you're wrong" to "WAY off base" conveys the idea that I didn't just disagree with her conclusion (which is all that I was doing) but didn't think she had any reasonable justification for coming to that conclusion because she lacked evidence, and added an additional level of derision to her characterization of my initial response.
Clearly what I'm trying to convey, and you keep avoiding [choosing, rather, to play a game of semantics with me], is that you check your privilege at the door.
Heads up, you're in a space where we discuss feminist issues (read: shit that we live through everyday). Being dismissive of our lived experiences because perhaps you haven't encountered it - in this case, that [the OP] is wrong in assuming that some anti-feminists believe feminists seek to erase men from our lives - reeks of privilege. In fact, the rhetoric that the OP is speaking of is not uncommon.
This has nothing to do with "your opinion differs than mine, therefore it is wrong". This is simply pointing out that if you truly want to engage here, you should be aware of topic in which you are engaging. I really don't think that's asking for all that much.
To add to this, I am aware that I am privileged in conversations about transgender/POC/differently-abled issues. The difference here being that instead of my attitude being condescending to the people who "Don't get my humour", I try to listen and learn from the experience.
Your entire comment comes across as a personal attack.
Not surprised... confronting our own privilege never feels nice.
Realistically speaking, a personal attack is more like suggesting a person "obviously suffer[s] from an abnormality." because they didn't get your "joke".
You know nothing about me.
Several where it nearly happened.
One woman I know went in for SRS - and they found a malformed set of female organs and a teratoma, a partially re-absorbed foetus inside. She had no vagina, this was self-fertilisation due to partly functional ovotestes.
She was one of the two "trans" (actually IS) people who had their UK birth certificates amended before the UK Gender Recognition Act.
A "virgin birth" through parthenogenesis is potentially possible in humans as well. We're talking odds of 1 in 100 million or less here though, and a viable foetus is unlikely.
Do you recall any online articles written about that case? Or maybe a documentary?
I think the unusual aspect of this case is that as far as they can tell, the species reproduces solely through parthenogenesis. As I understand it, species such as aphids reproduce through parthenogenesis when the conditions are inimical to sexual reproduction, but males aren't eliminated altogether. Since these ants no longer have some crucial bits of their sexual organs, it seems to be impossible (or at least very difficult) for them to 'switch back'.
Science is fascinating!
Well, I at least know of one other species-- a kind of lizard-- composed only of females.
Certain species of the whiptail lizard is what your thinking about. I first heard about it on Animal Planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiptail_lizard
There are also species of gecko that do as well, genus Lepidodactylus.
Possibly/probably others that I'm not aware of.
I have a background in entomology and my question would be, how do they generate new queens? Since pheromones released by the queen restricts 'sexual maturity' in other females, what happens if, as they say, these other females do not have functioning reproductive systems? Are they still using their reproductive tracks to clone themselves?
I'd be very interested in the success and weaknesses of this particular evolutionary strategy in the long run. Does this make them more vulnerable to disease? Less vulnerable to certain 'recessive genes'? Fascinating!
This is very interesting for social and extremely efficient species, but I wonder how this could be used to justify sex segregation for the sake of efficiency in humans? Like in schools, for example?
I read an SF story (titled "Whiptail") about a parallel-Earth human race which reproduced via parthenogenesis. The problem was, as you mention, that a disease could wipe out an entire family line. They ended up genetically engineering a male (something they didn't even have a word for) in order to achieve genetic diversity.
You mean we don't? It sounds pretty cool to me. Not having to navigate relationships or the adoption system? Sign me up!
It's freakin ants.
And?
And it's freakin ants
You must have a point, right? Do you think this is omigosh so silly and not a feminist issue? Generally speaking that's all your comments here on Feministing amount to, but it would be interesting to hear you explain your position on this one.
And I've asked you before, but never gotten a straight answer: if none of the things we discuss here on Feministing are legitimate feminist issues, then what would count as a feminist issue? Please do enlighten us. Otherwise, get your own fucking blog and discuss the "real" feminist issues there instead of sniping at people and trying to silence posters and derail discussions here.
@zooey-glass04
From what I've read, the evolution into an asexual species isn't unique to these ants. The Kalanchoe plant once was able to reproduce sexually, but currently no male plants have ever been found.
Interesting! Maybe this is the first insect case that's been found? Or maybe not - but it's still a fascinating discovery. It would be interesting to know why it occurs.
Conversations like this make me realise how lacking my science lessons were at school - if only I'd known then that the subject could actually be interesting!
True. Asexuality has occurred many times in many different organisms over time.
This ant colony reminds me of Whileaway from "The Female Man". I love that book.
I'm a bit irritated that, because their sexual organs have degenerated, they're now all referred to as female. Why female? Why not asexual? Because anything that's not male is female? Because they're cooperative and non-competitive?
Incidentally, I got quite a bit of hate mail when I posted on this last week and it was linked to by a couple of MRA sites.
It probably has to do with genetics. Ants work on a haplodiploidy system, where males are all halpoid (one set of chromosomes) and females are diploid (two sets, like us). So, genetically, any diploid ant is female, and that's probably how they're determining it.
Probably because they are diploid and not haploid, but I am not an expert. While in this case the distinction is pretty meaningless, in those cases where a species reproduces both by parthenogenesis and by regular, good old fashioned mating, it makes a lot more sense.
What entomology girl said, or the fact that they can bear children designates them as female.
Actually that's not strictly true. Physiologically, "female" simply means that those gametes that are larger and more energetically costly than those of the male, which tend to be small, cheap, and numerous. "Bearing children" often doesn't even come into the picture at all (i.e. fish, which just squirt out the eggs and swim away).
I stand corrected
Yeah, and don't male seahorses bear the children or lay the eggs or something? Male and female designation in biology are more complicated than who bears the children.
Anisogamy for the win.
Haha, this comment made my day!
Thank you for commenting. The non-science people in here theorizing about genetics are driving me crazy.
Oh pfft. They just haven't discovered the wonderfully fascinating world of genetics/biology/zoology/entomology yet! Help them!
:D
Sorry for driving you crazy. I actually did take a lot of science courses, including two genetics courses. My comments were based on the two articles I read on the topic, both of which attributed the classification of these ants to genital degeneration.
But thanks for putting me in my place. I promise to never even attempt to understand anything remotely scientific again in order to avoid hurting your sensitive little feelings. However, if you venture an opinion on Philosophy, Feminist Theory, Ancient Greece and Rome, or Victorian Literature I promise not to bite your head off or snark at you.
I don't mind you or anyone else trying to learn about science, but here's the thing - that's not what some people are doing. They aren't googling, they aren't reading or investigating, they're just talking out of their asses hoping that someone who knows better doesn't come along and correct them.
I remember the part about classifying the ones with larger gametes and the heavier reproductive investment as female from one of the genetics courses I took. But if all of the ants now share the same reproductive equipment and genitalia, then calling them either male or female seems strange, as there's no larger/smaller or more investment/less investment comparison to be made.
The diploid/haploid distinction does make more sense. I'm just not clear on why they need to be sexed at all if they all share the same anatomy and function. In my understanding, sexual reproduction occurs when the fusion of gametes is involved. But since that doesn't occur here, it's not clear why they would be sexed. Except that we have a very hard time talking about things in our culture without clear sex and gender categories. Which I take it is part of the interest of stories like these.
It's probably just that they're using existing terminology, because the ants are diploid, and because presumably they did used to have males in the species, that they are still referred to as female. There are animals which have always been asexual (like bacteria) and we don't call those females. It's just that these ants USED to be sexual.
You know...I wonder what would happen if you forced haploidy in an egg from those ants, if you could find the long lost residual male??? *cackles evilly*
No! Bad scientist! Go to the ethics commitee and think about what you've done.
I think its more than that-- this species used to have male and females, and its the females that are still around, hence still calling them females. There are also probably genetic distinctions (some people already said they're probably all diploid but I think I've read that in some species it is the female that has the non-matched chromosomes, so who knows).
Now if they found some completely alien species, say on another planet, that was all one gender and had a totally different way of reproducing, it might not make sense to say they were either male or female. But in this case there were originally males and females, and there just aren't any males anymore.
The unmatched chromosome thing you're referring to is something a fair bit different, but yes, in reptiles females are ZW (like XY in humans) and males are WW.
I'm not sure that explains why they still need to be categorized as either male or female. If sexual reproduction is not occuring or even possible anymore, and all the remaining individuals are anatomically identical, then retaining the sex categorization does seem unnecessary.
I think echidnas and platypuses have around about twent sex chromosomes a piece.
You know, this is a classic example of people jumping at any reason to be outraged over sexism, even in instances where it doesn't exist.
They are referred to as female because they are genetically female.
Yes, I was jumping at a reason to be outraged due to complete ignorance. It's not as if there isn't a long and rich history of scientific findings being interpreted through a patriarchal lens and used to reify cultural attitudes about gender. It's not as if there's not a long and rich history of classifying anything that's less-than-male as female (Ancient Greeks, anyone?). It's not as if most mainstream new sources that covered this story didn't claim that these ants were categorized as female due to genital degeneration. No. I pulled all this out of my ass just to have a reason to be pissy, like the irrational, ignorant, and weepy woman that I am.
Honestly, Rachel? You really think modern science defines male and female the way the Ancients did? You think we haven't moved past defining female as dickless? You said you took a genetics course. How did that not strike you as ridiculous? If you had paused and thought about it for half a second, you would have realized there was reason to investigate further. You would have read the link posted, or maybe followed the link to the BBC which had a far better explanation of what was going on. Maybe, god forbid, you would have looked up the actual journal article.
Yes, you absolutely jumped at the opportunity to be offended.
The link posted had no more specific info on why they were classified as female than the other articles I read, although it didn't say they were classified as female because of the genital degradation, like the others did.
And if you lack the basic reading and interpretive skills to understand my comments about the history of using patriarchal constructs to interpret and explain phenomena in the animal world, then I'm not sure what good my explaining this to you is going to do. Of course I don't think that this is Ancient Greece. But this stuff doesn't occur in a cultural vacuum, and the history is relevant here. Scientists are not raised by wolves, and their cultural background will influence their work. It's incredibly naive to act as if it won't. Let's talk about how fertilization of the human egg is still overwhelmingly characterized as a romantic quest in which the egg is entirely passive and the valiant sperm does all the work, even though this has been disproven since the 50s. Let's talk about how a lot of primate sexual behavior is still mischaracterized even though much data has been collected that indicates a whole range of female primate sexual behavior that was previously either invisible or intentionally ignored. And what about the history of overlooking or ignoring altogether same-sex mating and/or pair-bonding in many, many species? One of my areas of competence is Philosophy of Science, and I can link you to a long list of articles in well-resepcted journals if you have institutional access. If I were you, I'd start with Bashful Eggs, Macho Sperm, and Tonypandy by Paul Gross, or anything by Emily Martin or Evelyn Fox Keller.
Yes, I understood that you were saying that historically science has been used to support the patriarchy and, yes, I agree. Women's brains, valiant sperm, intersex children, etc. etc. Yes, a scientist's background will influence their work.
But did you honestly believe that a modern day scientist would reclassify a male insect as female simply because of "degraded" sexual organs?
Do you really think the scientific community is still sexist to such an astounding degree, to the point of ignoring genetics and other gross anatomical differences between male and female ants? Do you really think that modern day science defines female with as much nuance as the Ancient Greeks?
You have taken multiple genetics courses. You've probably watched a documentary or two on the Discovery channel. You should have realized the ridiculousness of that idea, realized that your sources were newspapers and therefore not especially trustworthy for scientific information. You should have investigated further.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that I thought they had reclassified males as females due to genital degeneration. My point, which I've made in numerous comments here, is that if they no longer reproduce using gamete fusion, which is my understanding of what sexual reproduction is, and they're now all anatomically identical, then it seems strange that we're still committed to sexing them. And the basis for calling them female hasn't been explained in any article I've seen, whether in the MSM or on science websites. If I'm wrong about this, by all means link me to the plethora of articles that explain why they're classified as female.
And I'm not sure why you're still asking this
Do you really think that modern day science defines female with as much nuance as the Ancient Greeks?
since you claim to understand that I was referring to historical scientific interpretations as a context. And yes, I do think that in some ways modern-day scientists are quite sexist in how they observe and interpret animal behavior. And it's not just me. Many, many scholars and scientists have critiqued science in this way. Once again, if you'd like some links to articles on this, I'd be glad to oblige you.
Are you familiar with the way modern medicine determined (assigned) the sex of babies with ambiguous genitalia until just about a decade ago? Ever heard of the phallometer? It's a pretty common trend in Western culture to view anything that's not-sufficiently-male as female by default. I don't think this phenomenon is limited to Ancient Greece.
I never did understand asexual species. How can you call them "female" when there is no male? If every species was asexual there wouldn't even be a word for female.
Be very careful here, lest you draw the wrath of argolis
Wheee ants!
That's nifty, although I wonder how new queens are generated? How do they avoid genetic stagnation? I guess maybe they don't. Woooo! I hope to hear more about this!
Also, the ants all still have vaginas. There's just a particular piece of the reproductive system that degraded.
See, now that's helpful info. The article I read (a few days ago) just said that their genitals had experienced degeneration so they were now all categorized as female.
Never trust newspaper articles about science. They rarely get even the most basic facts right.
I'm currently reading the dissertation :D It's like academic candy.
Do only the queens reproduce like in other ants? Because if so, how is this more efficient than sexual reproduction? And has the queen experienced this degradation of her lady-bits too?
Interesting...
From what I've read so far in the original paper, the queen lays eggs all the time, but she can "choose" whether the eggs are workers or queens. She lays a boatload of worker eggs and then some queen eggs, which run out and make new colonies.
It's more efficient because the queen doesn't have to "waste time" making male babies, and the males don't sit around in the nest sucking up resources like they do in honeybees. Heh. (It really sucks to be a male insect if you hadn't gathered.)
They probably don't avoid genetic stagnation. Asexuality apparently springs up all the time (especially in plants) but because diversity is lost so quickly in asexual species, they're more likely to go extinct.
True, true. As long as conditions stay stable they'll do fine; once they change, byebye ants!
Anyone find it odd that the blogger switches between "men" and "males", "women" and "females", eliding the distinction between gender and sex:
"On the other hand, it seems that a lack of men gave these women more time and energy to cultivate some of the most elaborate forms of ant agriculture ever studied."
There are no women in this study...there are ants.
I found that weird too. The headline should read, "Ant Colony Reproduces Without Males".
How to avoid genetic stagnation? Mutation + selection pressures, maybe? I dunno. Just throwing that out there.
I think the intended point was that sexual reproduction produces a higher degree of variation than asexual. This corresponds with some earlier comments about how asexual reproduction appears in stable environments, where the selective pressures are not as strong.
The whiptail lizard also reproduces without males. Yet they still engage in sexual behavior.
That's interesting! Also, Lesbian Lizards would make a great name for a band. (Aaaaand I'll stop being completely off-topic now...)
wowww. that is so cool. i feel like i need to rent planet earth and do some nature appreciation now.
thanks for posting something positive and uplifting like this!
Very odd....or very humorous!
This is in the humor section after all, or at least on feministing it is. The link "story is actually true" goes to a science fiction site which references a BBC article. The BBC article doesn't mention women or men in it at all.
I don't know...is this anthropomorphizing ants or "insectmophizing" humans?...or both?
Either way it's funny
"That is kind of amazing. How much you want to bet this is what anti-feminists imagine we feminists want to be able to do? "
Good job dispelling this myth by posting this non-feminist issue on a feminist blog...
"Good job dispelling this myth by posting this non-feminist issue on a feminist blog..."
Good job dispelling the myth that feminists don't have a sense of humor.
I actually think this does relate to feminism, if only tangentially.
Biology is often used by anti-feminists to try to put women in their place, using half-baked arguments about hormones and muscle mass to say we shouldn't be able to vote. And this biological theory of male superiority often extends far beyond humans; people do tend to have this idea that males of a species are the strong, dominant, working individuals and the females are just baby machines.
So it's nice to see that, no, "male" doesn't mean better or stronger or smarter. It just means "small cheap gametes." (Which, incidentally, leads to MALES being little more than walking testicles in a lot of species. Anglerfish, anyone?)
For instance, how about the "female non-human primates are monogomous while the males mate with as many females as they can" myth? Which of course is still used to justify male promiscuity and enforce female sexual propriety in humans.
Thanks for defining feminism for us. Our feeble lady-brains make it pretty hard to determine that for ourselves. Now, if you're not too busy, there's a big discussion of transgender issues going on right now, if you'd care to slip over there and educate the trans folk on what is and is not a transgender issue.
To quote Jurrasic Park "Life finds a way"
I like it!
How about this one from Antz:
"Labor? What you YOU know about labor? How would YOU feel if you were expected to give birth every 10 seconds for the rest of your life?"
"How much you want to bet this is what anti-feminists imagine we feminists want to be able to do? "
Bet? I already saw this on digg and that was one of the first comments. "lul be those hairy legged feminists are happy! IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME."
And then the fungus farming can begin!
It's all coming together.
Why'd they have to lose their genitals? (Disclaimer: I'm not being pervy, but honest), the clitoris is a great biological invention and I would hate to lose that!
If you don't use it, you lose it.
Ok, suppose this population of humans had this special gland to help them eat unicorn meat. The only thing to eat where they live is unicorns so if a baby is born with a mutation that makes this special gland not work, the baby will die.
But suppose this population of humans go somewhere new where there are no unicorns. If a baby is born with a mutation so that special gland doesn't work, it still has stuff to eat so it lives and no one notices. After awhile, that mutation (and others like it) spread through the population and then NO ONE has that special organ anymore.
Get it?
Not necessarily. Neutral traits don't spread like beneficial ones, which is why humans still have wisdom teeth and that sort of thing. So it's possible that the unicorn gland might disappear, but it might just linger forever and a day too.
Good point. It doesn't always disappear.
Hmm... I am assuming that the reproductive organs that were lost in the ants were neutral traits. Is that right? Or were they costly to maintain, and therefore were harmful to the ant?
I get it, duh. But why arent the ants lesbian? Or what about ant self-pleasure? As a bi (that sticks mainly with women) I wouldnt want my genitals to go the way of the dinosaurs just because I'm not using them in hetero reproductive sex. And I think that sentiment is echoed beyond just me.....
I recall reading an article some time ago about how the Y chromosome is something of a genetic aberration that appears to be slowly recycling itself out of the human DNA structure. Strictly speaking, in genetic terms, men are a complicated sperm delivery system.
According to the Patriarchy (Forbes) that isn't true.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/31/male-sex-chromosome-cz_rl_0831male.html
I don't have time to read every single comment on this thread, but I just had to say I totally love it when feminists let their inner geeks shine!
I imagine they're quite right :)
I wonder if the species was named for Smith College. Those entomologists have a slightly cheeky sense of humor :)