#parthenogenetic

[kirstielol]

so, someone studying microbiology & genetics at guelph university contacted me, and they want me to send them some dna (in the form of shed skin) from kiwi & her partho baby so they can add it to their "genome database"! even they were talking about how incredibly rare this is!

and like personally, i can hardly find ANY information on parthenogenesis in crested geckos. searching on google brings up nothing except a few instances of people having a partho egg that never hatched. there are a total of 3 videos on youtube of this happening to someone, two by the same person and the gecko was born with an eye deformity, then one random video from like 6 years ago with no updates. i searched on instagram and found 1 video from 3 years ago.. again with 0 updates. i posted on reddit where my post blew up on the crested gecko reddit, had 2 people comment that this happened to them.. one of them the gecko was born with a very bad deformity and lived for only a few months, and one person who says their partho baby is 5 months old and still doing well! so far that's been the ONLY source i can find of someone else having a partho baby that's survived, and theirs isn't even an adult yet.

[queruloustea]

i got asked about Quirrel Beforetimes Dad (Mom) Shenanigans the other day, thought i would share the extra doodle i did as well <33

one must imagine the little creature very displeased

[eon-bug-collection]

would you look at the time... it's weevil.

[podcast-hemocytoblast]

At least two species within the goblin spider family (family Oonopidae) — Heteroonops spinimanus and Triaeris stenaspis, in case anyone is wondering — are believed to be parthenogenetic (in other words, they can develop an embryo from an unfertilized egg). So, with this in mind, do y’all think there’s ever been some unlucky Web Avatar out there who went to a routine appointment at the gynecologist only to get the news that they’re the next Virgin Mary and they’re gonna give birth to Web Jesus?

[deathlessathanasia]

“The contrast between the two generations of Hera’s children is considerable: her children by Zeus are given little description and are indeed mentioned almost in passing, but Hephaestus receives high praise as the god of crafts and smithing, praise that echoes Homer’s characterization in Iliad 18. The Hephaestus of the Iliad, however, is the son of both Hera and Zeus. Furthermore, Hesiod’s Hephaestus shows no signs of being a source of shame for Hera as he is in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (316–21), which similarly associates Hephaestus’s parthenogenetic birth with Hera’s anger about Athena but has Hera casting her deformed son into the sea, only to have him rescued, to her dismay, by Thetis. Hephaestus himself recounts Hera’s violent disgust at his disability in Iliad 18.394–99 in an account that otherwise focuses on his artistic talents. The Homeric ambiguity of Hephaestus—handicapped yet able, divine yet of low status—appears in the iconographic tradition as well and has provided fodder for scholarly interrogation.

Hesiod’s Hephaestus may reflect the ambiguity of Homer’s, but at the very least his negative qualities are downplayed or suppressed. Even his monstrosity is in question. The epithet amphigueeis (ἀµφιγυή��ις [571, 579, 945]) is one of the few aspersions in Hesiod’s depiction of Hephaestus, but the meaning of the word is uncertain. Although usually translated “bandy-legged” as a reference to Hephaestus’ handicap, amphigueeis always appears alongside a word for “famed” (περικλυτός or ἀγακλυτός). Its consistent proximity to fame challenges the usual understanding of its reference to deformity, as H. Humbach has pointed out. Humbach further argues that the epithet must be understood as a close relative of amphiguos (ἀµφίγυος, “double-pointed”) and thus denotes Hephaestus’s association with double-edged weaponry or tools rather than his curved limbs. Hesiod’s Hephaestus, then, is possibly unique in embodying his mother’s anger at Zeus without incurring any of it himself for his deformity, which may not even exist in Hesiod’s version. Hera has the added ability of producing such a child defiantly, in a parallel to Tiamat’s parthenogenetic production of monsters to combat Marduk, but again, from Hesiod’s version emerge two differences: Hephaestus is arguably not monstrous and neither he nor his mother suffers the same unhappy fate of Tiamat and her monstrous offspring. Rather, Hesiod incorporates even this act of defiance into reinforcement of Zeus’s reign. In engendering this laudable, able child, Hera introduces craftsmanship, which Zeus employs for his own purposes. Hephaestus becomes an ally of Zeus, who enlists him to create Pandora (571) and the crown she wears (578–84). As with Gaea, gender conflict, here expressed in the very act of parthenogenesis itself, ultimately and oddly converges with support for Zeus, bolstering him and his agenda in the end.”

 - Parthenogenesis in hesiod’s theogony by Arum Park

[miragemirrors]

necrofriggians are probably like the lesbian lizards of space but cold moths

[txttletale]

more generally this kind of hypocrisy is inherent to all these tme pepole who idolize the (cis) usamerican queer cultures of the 70s and 80s as the uncontested pinnacle of queerness. whatever problematic kink du jour is Sexualizing Abuse and therefore Evil--just don't ask them what pup hoods or leather 'daddies' and their 'boys' or whips and chains or especially all those peaked caps in all the black and white photos they reblog are meant to be sexualizing! those are all inert floating signifiers that popped forth parthenogenetically as a communal Gay Egregore with no meaning or connotations outside that, dontcha know

[herpsandbirds]

Last weekend I took my 6-year old niece to a reptile center to look at a whole bunch of snakes, lizards, spiders and so on. We both really enjoyed it and one of the lizards was this parthenogenetically born monitor! She posed for us in her pool and was adorable. She is a Varanus s. komaini monitor lizard, btw!

What a pretty baby!

[homeric-hymnist]

hera voice divorce isn't enough i need to parthenogenetically birth a monster that rivals his ass

[kirstielol]

Also I moved Peach into a much bigger tank!! I'll have to see how she does in here.. idk if I've mentioned this here before but Peach has a back deformity and can't jump very well. She can climb just fine though so 🤞

[cyren-myadd]

Rant about Eywa theories

Eywa is one of the most interesting concepts in the Avatar universe, imo. The concept of an interplanetary consciousness that every native organism can "interface" with is so cool. One thing that really fascinates me about Eywa is how she goes about "protecting only the balance of life" as Neytiri explained to Jake. As of Avatar 1, Eywa did not react to the human threat mining and destroying the forest for several years, nor the genocide/abduction of the Sarentu clan, even though Eywa would've been aware of what was happening when the Na'vi shared their memories with her soul trees. She only reacted to the threat AFTER she was exposed to human memories of the destruction of earth when Jake interfaced with her via his avatar body, and then again when she interfaced with Grace’s human body. The reaction was similar to an immune response within a body attacking a foreign virus, with native fauna mobilizing to attack anything that registered as alien. One interesting thing of note about the immune response is that the animals were not physically connected to Eywa when they attacked, which means Eywa can somehow send commands to organisms “wirelessly.” This phenomena could also explain how the atokirina conveniently show up to stop Neytiri from killing Jake. Anyway, the immune response won the final battle of A1, in A2 we saw the immune response can't protect Pandora in its entirety. The recoms could get past the immune response undetected, and Bridgehead and the whaling ships didn't face an immune response at all.

Another interesting thing about Eywa we learned from the original script for Avatar 2, is that she is confirmed to have caused Grace’s pregnancy. Norm describes Kiri’s birth as “parthenogenesis,” which is a biological process in which an egg produces viable offspring without sperm from a male. (idk if the script needs a spoiler warning, so I'm putting one just to be safe) Based on the fact that Jake describes the pregnancy as “a mystery,” we can assume parthenogenetic birth isn’t something normal to the Na’vi’s alien reproductive cycle. On earth, parthenogenesis is only found in invertebrates and some plants. Assuming that Na’vi reproduction is somewhat similar to earth animal reproduction (which I think we can safely do since the Sully children clearly have inherited different traits from their parents, implying that they get half of their DNA from each parent just like on earth, but they are aliens so I could be completely wrong here), Grace would’ve had gametes inside of her avatar’s reproductive system, which are cells that only contain half of the genetic material to produce a viable offspring. A complex, multicellular organism like a Na’vi couldn’t exist without a full set of genes, so in order to produce a zygote (a new cell with a full set of genes that can grow into an embryo), the other half of the genetic material must’ve come from somewhere else, and the only place it could’ve come from is Eywa herself. This means that Eywa, to some capacity, can create or at least copy and reproduce genetic material. Since Kiri is so similar to Grace, it’s possible the other half of her genes are just a complete copy of Grace.

From all this we can conclude some things about Eywa.

We know she is not:

All powerful

All knowing

A “god” in the traditional sense

We know she is capable of:

Storing memories, including memories of the deceased from the last time they connected with her

Making decisions to react to threats based on those memories

Interfacing with an alien’s nervous system

Commanding fauna

Sending signals to organisms without physical contact

Creating/changing genetic material

What is still unclear is how Eywa’s consciousness works. Is she:

A sentient individual?

A hive mind of the deceased Na’vi?

An amalgamation of consciousness built from memories?

Something akin to a biological artificial intelligence?

Now that we’ve established the things that are confirmed about Eywa, I want to get into some speculation about what else she might be capable of. Note that from this point on I’m being purely SPECULATIVE and I’m not saying any of this is for sure possible in canon, I’m just coming up with hypotheses based on info we already have. After the end of Avatar 2, it looks like Jake and the Na’vi are planning to make their stand against the RDA, but if they want any hope of winning against the RDA’s superior technology, they’re going to need a combination of a Na’vi war force and divine intervention, just like in Avatar 1. The question is, how will Eywa help them? The one form of defense we’ve seen from her is the immune response, but that can only go so far. It can be fooled by avatars and recoms, and it is not strong enough to attack a heavily fortified base like Bridgehead. Eywa is going to have to step up her game, and I’ve created three theories on how she might do that.

📢potential spoiler warning for the last theory!📢

Theory 1: The 880 Virus

Project 880 is a screenplay James Cameron wrote in 1995 that eventually morphed into the Avatar we know and love today. One element in 880 that never made it to Avatar was the counter-viruses. For every earth virus the RDA brought with them to Pandora, Eywa created a counter-virus that would stop it, protecting both native organisms and the humans from getting sick from the viruses ever again. The RDA was even planning to create vaccines using the counter-viruses and sell them back on earth. At the end of Project 880 when the RDA is forced to retreat, Jake tells them that if they ever come back, Eywa will unleash a deadly virus that will wipe out any human that dares set foot on Pandora again. Even though Project 880 is not canon, I could see James Cameron revisiting his old idea to help the protagonists shake off the RDA forever. The problem is they’d need to find a way to protect the friendly humans like Spider and Norm.

Theory 2: Avatar Kiri

Between the parthenogenetic birth and Kiri’s ability to control vines (seen in The High Ground comic) and anemones (seen in Avatar 2), the movies are clearly setting up for there to be something special about her. In both the comic scene where she controlled plants and the movie scene where she controlled the anemones, the characters around her expressed confusion that she could do so, from which we can assume those are not normal abilities of a Na’vi. Since Kiri is also established to have a deep connection to Eywa, it is possible she is meant to act as an “avatar.” In the original context of the word, an avatar is a manifestation of a deity in mortal form, so Kiri would act as an avatar for Eywa. Since Kiri is a person and not a… whatever Eywa is, she can make her own decisions and react quickly to problems without having to absorb memories first. There’s no more information to speculate about what other abilities Kiri may develop in the future, so unfortunately, there’s not much else to discuss here that we can base on any evidence.

Theory 3: If you can’t beat em, join em

📢Here’s where we’re getting into potential spoiler territory.📢 In the BTS footage for Avatar 2, there were some scripts accidentally shown which described some very interesting scenes: Spider, breathing without a mask, and Kiri confessing to Mo’at that she caused it to happen. There was also some concept art shown in Las Vegas that depicted Spider with a neural queue plugged into the underwater spirit tree with Kiri. Full disclaimer, it’s entirely possible these are scrapped ideas and will not be seen in the Avatar franchise, but for the sake of this hypothesis, let’s assume they’re legit. I’ve seen a lot of people asking the question of HOW would this happen, but I haven’t seen anybody asking an equally important question: WHY? I’m very interested in the HOW and maybe I’ll make a discussion post on it later, but for my hypothesis let’s just talk about the WHY. Even though Kiri claimed responsibility for it, I don’t think this is something she could do without the help of Eywa, since Na’vi aren’t established to have the ability to radically alter other organisms. So why would Eywa want to give a human kid the ability to breathe the Pandoran air? Sure, he’s Kiri’s friend, but Eywa has never intervened to save an individual’s life just because people cared about them before (otherwise we’d still have Neteyam RIP). As Neytiri said, “The Great Mother protects the balance of life.” Eywa did not intervene to stop the destructive mining or protect the Sarentu, she only intervened AFTER Grace’s memories showed her that the RDA could potentially cause planet-wide destruction like on earth. So if she gave Spider this life-saving ability, there must be a bigger reason for it other than just Kiri wanting him to survive. My hypothesis is that Eywa has realized what a massive threat the humans pose to Pandora, and that her immune system response is insufficient to protect her biosphere. Her solution is to behave like a virus and weaponize the humans against themselves. When a virus infects a healthy organism, it “hacks” into healthy cells and reprograms them to attack uninfected cells and produce more viruses. Eywa will “hack” Spider’s biology the same way she “hacked” into Grace’s nervous system to interface with her, and will “reprogram” him to breathe the air and have a neural queue. Spider is already loyal to the Na’vi, so she doesn’t need to do anything further to him, but what if she repeated the process with other humans? Any human who gained a neural queue would be able to experience tsaheylu and the connection between all living things. Humans who are already loyal to Eywa would be able to fight back better with their new abilities, and it would give Eywa more access to more memories to gain a better understanding of the enemy. Humans who are loyal to the RDA would be more inclined to switch sides after experiencing Eywa’s consciousness, much like Jake did. I’m aware this final theory is a bit more out there than the others, but it spawned from me trying to answer the question of WHY would Spider get the ability to breathe the air and I felt like there had to be a bigger reason than just Kiri wanting to save him. Unlike Kiri, there’s not some special significance about Spider (other than his connection to Quaritch, but I don’t think Eywa would care about that) that would make him vital to the fight against the RDA, so I thought, what if he’s not special, he just happened to be the first piece of a much larger plan? And the result is this theory.

What do you think of my theories and do you guys have any of your own to share?

TLDR: Eywa is really cool, and in the future I think she could possibly defeat the RDA by unleashing a deadly virus, giving Kiri special powers, or "converting" Spider and other humans.

[lurking-latinist]

👀👀 wanna say more about your eusocial timelord theory?

when you sent this ask like a year ago apparently I did not, for which I apologize.

now it's the wee small hours and I'm trying to clear out my asks. but eusocial time lords are so fun. forgive anything that doesn't make sense/jars weirdly in this, I'm trying to explain some quite spitbally worldbuilding.

among other things, it's an explanation for (1) why are there so few time ladies on screen and (2) that very strange thing in I think it's in Gallifrey where Pandora was 'the first female President' and apparently that's a big deal? but like why would a different planet (where they regenerate!!) have the same manifestations of sexism as we have? and also vaguely riffing on the VNAs lore that Gallifrey used to be a matriarchy and Rassilon overthrew it, but also kind of completely transforming that lore.

so forget gender, this is not about gender. "male"/"female" is at best a very rough translation of the binary that Gallifreyans are concerned with, which is worker/queen. They are bees!

The Time Ladies (i.e. Gallifreyans played by female human actors) that we see in the pre-War era (all of this applies to the pre-War era)--Romana, the Rani, Flavia, Inquisitor Darkel--are biologically the equivalent of insect queens. (And the Doctor, the Master, Borusa, the Floating Time Lord, Commander Maxil, etc. etc. are the equivalent of worker bees. The fact that the former all present as female and the latter all present as male is just sort of a translation convention/useful coincidence, I guess.) Gallifreyans evolved from a eusocial species and their early political structures were developments of the hive structure, with reproductive capacity strongly linked to political authority.

Presumably this is what Rassilon, or whatever revolutionary Rassilon stole credit from, is supposed to have overturned--the link between reproductive capacity and political authority. But in my version, it was before that that Looming became a thing: the queens had control of the Looms, so it was the ultimate refinement of their arts and sciences, and it was their way of getting rid of whatever drone class there used to be, if they weren't already parthenogenetic.

And that's why there's the stereotype in Gallifrey--mentioned in connection with Pandora, suggested as a concern about Romana--that a "female" (queen) President will be autocratic. It's seen as a potential return to "how things once were."

And then I did a lot of worldbuilding for how government worked at a stage in history when there was a sort of uneasy balance between reproductive and political power, but that was for a fic Moki was working on and I think she's still working on it, so no spoilers!

So what you end up with is a hive structure where the role of the queen has been sort of abstracted away into... well, the hive itself. The power at the heart of Gallifrey is Gallifrey. I feel like that explains a lot of what's wrong with them.

There might be another branch of the species that evolved away from eusocial structure into something more like solitary bees and that's the Shobogans, possibly, since nobody seems at all clear what the Shobogans are.

Also I read that with naked mole rats, the only eusocial mammal, there are a few in each colony that are predisposed to not fit into the colony and instead go and wander and find other colonies, to promote genetic diversity, and I'm just saying, renegades.

And after the War when there are often maybe two Gallifreyans left, that's why whatever's left of the hivemind keeps trying to get at least one of them to turn out as a Time Lady. Fortunately for the universe, neither of them seems that interested in reproducing.

[ladyvictoriaa11]

In the traditional version of the myth in which Athena is a parthenogenetic daughter of Zeus (no Metis) I have always believed that Athena must be very similar to Hera, as she is the fruit of Zeus' thoughts, almost like his design of an ideal daughter and therefore similar in appearance to Hera.

[shewhoexploresthewoods]

“Some of the old goddess tales were twisted to suit the takeover of male powers, in order to win converts to their new gods. For example, Pandora (All-Gifts) was originally a Great Mother Goddess, whose box (womb, cauldron, cave, cup) was a reservoir of beauty and life-sustaining gifts. Patriarchal myth tells us that Her box contained all manner of destructive demons, which once unleashed upon the world, brought evil and suffering to all. Eve was also a Mother Goddess, whose tree was the Tree of Life. The serpent was her own sensual wisdom, and the apple was her sacred fruit. Athene, whom we are told was born fully grown out of the head of Zeus, dressed in armor and ready for war, was originally the daughter of the matriarchal goddess Metis. (Meter, method, measure, matter, mother…) Both mother and daughter were worshipped by the Amazons at Lake Triton, and were born parthenogenetically—without sperm.”

This quote was taken from the book, Ariadne’s Thread A Workbook of Goddess Magic by Shekhinah Mountainwater. The quote comes from the Myth-Making section of Cycle 1 on page 26.

Reading about the true origins of Pandora, Eve, and Athene (female mythical figures we’ve all heard about and seen in popular media) is cathartic. My heart is filled with joy!

[femalethink]

In the beginning ... was a very female sea. For two-and-a-half billion years on earth, all life-forms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean—nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms. Charles Darwin believed the menstrual cycle originated here, organically echoing the moon-pulse of the sea. And, because this longest period of life's time on earth was dominated by marine forms reproducing parthenogenetically, he concluded that the female principle was primordial. In the beginning, life did not gestate within the body of any creature, but within the ocean womb containing all organic life. There were no specialized sex organs; rather, a generalized female existence reproduced itself within the female body of the sea.

Before more complex life forms could develop and move onto land, it was necessary to miniaturize the oceanic environment, to reproduce it on a small and mobile scale. Soft, moist eggs deposited on dry ground and exposed to air would die; life could not move beyond the water-hugging amphibian stage. In the course of evolution, the ocean—the protective and nourishing space, the amniotic fluids, even the lunar-tidal rhythm—was transferred into the individual female body. And the penis, a mechanical device for land reproduction, evolved.

The penis first appeared in the Age of Reptiles, about 200 million years ago. Our archetypal association of the snake with the phallus contains, no doubt, this genetic memory. This is a fundamental and recurring pattern in nature: Life is a female environment in which the male appears, often periodically, and by the female, to perform highly specialized tasks related to species reproduction and a more complex evolution.

.... Among mammals, even among humans, parthenogenesis is not technically impossible. Every female egg contains a polar body with a complete set of chromosomes; the polar body and the egg, if united, could form a daughter embryo. In fact, ovarian cysts are unfertilized eggs that have joined with their polar bodies, been implanted in the ovarian wall, and started to develop there.

This is not to say that males are an unnecessary sex. Parthenogenesis is a cloning process. Sexual reproduction, which enhances the variety and health of the gene pool, is necessary for the kind of complex evolution that has produced the human species. The point being made here is simply that, when it comes to the two sexes, one of us has been around a lot longer than the other.

—Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, "The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth."

[addicted2wasps]

Pelecinus polyturator. 🖤 Probably in my top 5 favourite Hymenopterans along with Tremex columba. They are parasitoids of Phyllophaga larvae. Female populations further North are known to be parthenogenetic as males are rare. Males are more common as you go South, however.