To their surprise, two male condors were genetically unrelated to their supposed fathers—100% of their DNA came from their mothers. Two females independently reproduced via parthenogenesis while housed with males they had previously mated with, researchers report this week in the Journal of Heredity.
Unfortunately, neither of the condors born via “virgin birth” are still alive today, so researchers can’t study them to fully understand how the unusual circumstances affected their health.
腦補出不能解剖是有點創意
Decades of captive breeding and hundreds of condors later, scientists decided to analyze the DNA of all birds since born into the breeding program.