OLD THREAD REPOST
Komodo dragons are one of a handful of vertebrate species who are capable of parthenogenesis - "virgin birth" - as well as sexual reproduction. But a female komodo dragon who reproduces asexually can only create male babies, because nature is weird like that. Let's explain why.
You probably learned at school that sex is determined by XX chromosomes to make a female, and XY chromosomes to make a male, but that isn't *quite* true.
Some animals use altogether different systems. The komodo dragon is one species who instead has a ZW system of sex determination (along with birds, some fish, some crustaceans, many reptiles and some insects).
(Also it's more complicated than that in animals that do have the XY system).
When some animals reproduce asexually, they fully clone themselves - for example, whiptail lizards (AKA the lesbian lizards who we told you about in this linked thread)
Komodo dragons do it a little differently. When they reproduce asexually, they use a process called half-cloning, where a small cell called a polar body, which is produced at the same time as ovulation, fuses with the egg cell. Basically, komodo dragons are fertilising their own eggs. https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/109563465595162536
Attached: 1 image OLD VIRGIN BIRTH THREAD REPOST Do you have a favourite lizard? Not yet? Let us submit, for your consideration, the desert grassland whiptail lizard, aka the "lesbian lizard". Several species of whiptail lizard, including the desert grassland whiptail, are all-female. Males of their species simply do not exist. They reproduce through parthenogenesis - no male needed.
When half-cloning happens, there's two options for chromosomes: ZZ, or WW.
ZZ makes a male, and it's viable. WW isn't viable, so makes nothing.
And that's how komodo dragons can reproduce asexually, but only create male young when they do so.
Vagina Museum
Minihood
Jules