Have you read the story about Flora, the Komodo dragon that “gave birth” to quintuplets, despite having had no interaction with a male? Says the zoo curator, Kevin Buley: “When the first of the babies hatched, we didn’t know whether to make her a cup of tea or pass her the cigars.”
A virgin birth? Flora, what fun is that?!
This reminds me of my infertility. While some couples I knew got pregnant after washing their underwear together, it took years and fertility drugs for me to have one child. My sister, like Flora, had numerous “hatchlings,” all without a thought of “trying.” Currently, there are only about 4000 Komodo dragons in the wild, only 1000 of them female. So Flora’s zoo has been trying to mate their Komodo dragons in captivity. What’s really weird is that to date lizards that are able to self-inseminate are unable to get pregnant the normal way. We’ll see what happens with Flora.
While zoo officials and Komodo dragon aficionados wonder what the world would be like without Komodo dragons, Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Children of Men, wondered about life without children. Without giving the movie away, let’s just say worldwide infertility is not pretty. With all of women I know who are infertile and who only were able to get pregnant with drastic messures (shots of hormones, egg-aspirations, artificial inseminsations, etc.), the movie didn’t seem quite so far-fetched to me. But we, like Flora, have been “self-inseminating” for 27 years, after all. (The first “test tube baby” just gave birth to her first child, conceived the natural way.)
Just as expecting parents painstakingly labor over what to name their children, zoo officials are beginning the careful process of coming up with names for the five hatchlings, who are expected to live for 40+ years. My first thought was “Jesus,” for obvious reasons. But on further reflection, I decided it wouldn’t be a good name since the process of parthenogensis involves the lizard self-fertilizing her eggs. Im pretty sure Mary didn’t do that!
What would you name the Komodo dragon hatchlings?
cmyplace 