Consider the cave man. His job was to get up early in the morning, drink a mug of some caffeinated mash from a non-toxic jungle bean, then clock in to hunt down a wooly mammoth to bring home groceries for the waiting family. In the evening, after possibly attempting to impregnate his woman, he would sit around the campfire in his cave and crack lame jokes to try to entertain her.
She was probably not in the mood for either of those last two things, having slaved all day over a hot cauldron of boiled mammoth meat, chasing the kids around the cave, washing her man’s loincloths and trying to keep things generally in order around the dwelling.
Still, man’s role today maybe isn’t that much different. We go to work to bring home food for the family, try to entertain our wives and then possibly impregnate them so we can continue the species.
I’ve often commented to others that despite our overly touted self importance in the world, men really are around only to provide food, entertainment and the occasional ritual to perpetuate our species.
But thanks to our official state reptile, the New Mexico whiptail lizard, that last item on a male’s check list may someday make him superfluous. If what happens with this lizard’s reproduction cycle gets transferred to homo sapiens, we males may someday be genetically removed as a necessary gender.
This energetic lizard species, which I’m proud to say has taken up residence in our yard in Las Cruces, is comprised completely of females. It has no use of males to reproduce. They reproduce through a process known as parthenogenesis, allowing embryos to develop from unfertilized eggs. This makes them the most common vertebrates with obligate asexual reproduction.
According to AI, here’s how it works:
- No Fertilization: The female gamete (egg) triggers development on its own.
- Apomixis: Cells divide via mitosis, producing diploid offspring that are exact clones of the mother.
- Automixis: Haploid cells restore the diploid number through chromosome duplication or fusion with a polar body, shuffling genes so offspring are similar, but not identical, clones.
The New Mexico whiptail grows from 6.5 to 9.1 in (16.5 to 23 cm) in length, and is typically overall brown or black in color with seven pale yellow stripes from head to tail. Light colored spots often occur between the stripes. They have a white or pale blue underside, with a blue or blue-green colored throat. They are slender bodied, with a long tail that is more commonly blue-green in their infant stage, melding into the same spotted brown and yellow color as they age. As I’ve witnessed myself, the tails of the fast-moving lizards can break off easily if the reptile is temporarily caught or chased by a predator. After the tail breaks off, it starts a wild gyrating motion in an attempt to confuse the predator and throw off its chase. The tail will eventually grow back.
They are useful in gardens like ours, feeding on undesirable insects mostly at night. According to Wikipedia, they are “diurnal and insectivorous” feeding primarily on spiders and insects such as termites, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, caterpillars, moths and butterflies.” And especially important to my wife and me, these lizards will also eat scorpions, which have suddenly started inhabiting our neighborhood.
Knowledge about the lizards among the LGBT community has prompted them to earn the term “leaping lesbian lizard,” although I’ve never actually seen one leap.
And here’s another fact about these lizards. Their poop is easily distinguished from other critters’ poop. It’s usually about an inch long, mostly dark but with a white tip on one end. According to experts, the white tip is a chalky concentration of uric acid.
So if you see this kind of stuff on the ground around your house, be glad. Maybe you’ll have fewer scorpions or other nasty insects to deal with. And if you’re a male, maybe it will make you think about your declining importance in the scheme of nature.
aero-cordero.com 