Call it an evolutionary twist?! As been rightly described by AP addressing an amazing biological phenomenon a Komodo dragon — the world’s largest lizard and a native to Indonesia — has managed to become pregnant all on her own without taking any help from its male counterpart!
Flora, as she is named, is pregnant with seven baby Komodo dragons! Though other reptile species reproduce asexually by a process called parthenogenesis, such a phenomenon is documented for the first time in a Komodo dragon.
Kevin Buley, a reptile expert at Flora’s home at the Chester Zoo in this town in northern England said,
We saw blood vessels and a small embryo. And we knew immediately that Flora had fertilized the eggs herself.
Expressing her astonishment and excitement, Buley further says,
We were blown away when we realized what she’d done! But we certainly won’t be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus.
It’s not just Flora, but also another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, who has been astonishingly discovered to be pregnant by the parthenogenesis process! Both the cases of Flora and the London lizard, Sungai, are reported in details in a paper published in the journal Nature recently.