This made me chuckle today… Bugs getting it on!
So this photo may look like a Sea Star with a gigantic dick, but it’s not. This comically proportioned animal is actually an entirely new animal growing from just one surviving limb from the original adult. Yes my friends, this is Asexual Reproduction at its finest.
As humans we focus on sex. A lot. It’s pretty much one of the most important things to us. It’s that way for a lot of animals, but other animals, like echinoderms, are able to get along just fine without sex. Now echinoderms can produce sexually as well, and if given a choice they usually prefer to, but Asexual Reproduction comes in handy in a tight squeeze. These are animals that are able to generate an exact copy of themselves from less that 1/5th of their body! With some animals it’s as small as 1/16th!
Say a sea star finds itself somewhere where food is plentiful, but there aren’t very many others around. It can populate an are by itself, and if by that point there still aren’t any other individuals to mate with, the clones can then mate with each other. One thing is different, though. The resulting offspring may be either sex, thereby enabling sexual reproduction. It’s not the best thing for the gene pool, but it’s enabled echinoderms to take over the worlds oceans. They’re found everywhere.
Ha! A sea star?
(Source: Flickr / diverken)
