Virgin Komodo dragon is expecting

Another "arrow in the quiver" for Darwin's Theory. Let's see how the supporters of Intellegent Design explain this. 1950s Soviet Union experienced the death of half its citizens in a failed experiment to force evolution to fit their political paradigm. The theories of French genetisist Lamark provided what appeared to be scientific grounding for the theory of Soviet-style, centrally planned communism.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.

Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.

"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.

He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.

Parthenogenesis has occurred in other lizard species, but Buley and his team said this was the first time it has been shown in Komodo dragons -- the world's largest lizards.

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