A sterilisation camp held in Chhattisgarh, an impoverished state in central India, has claimed the lives of 13 women, most of whom were young and marginalised. The women, who died within hours of the procedure…
I’ll have a clean cage with a side of fertility issues.
Mouse image via www.shutterstock.com
Mice possess a notable talent: they are excellent at making more mice. Their ability to reproduce at a breakneck pace is one reason they are often used as experimental research subjects. Thus, when Dr…
The UK parliament will soon consider making Britain the first country to allow three-person IVF. The regulations are yet to be approved, but the government is currently backing moves to allow the creation…
Males produce faster sperm when mated to their sisters, according to a recent study of guppies. Researchers from the University…
Male orb-web spiders are dwarfed by their female counterparts, but they can maximise success if they don’t mate indiscriminately.
Brian Gratwicke/Flickr
Males will mate with anything. Well, that is the general view, one that exists because of a simple biological underpinning: females are reproductively limited by costly gestation, while males are only…
The female sex hormone oestrogen can be produced and released from the brain as well as the ovaries, according to a study. The research, recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that the…
After mating, all male Antechinus die … but why?
badoo_tealeaf
Imagine if you only had one shot at passing on your genes before you died. It happens more often in the natural world than you might expect: suicidal reproduction - where one or both sexes of a species…
All organisms have been evolutionary programmed to spread their genes as far and wide as possible. One way to do that is to produce many offspring, and for that animals have developed some very strange…
Debate continues over how dinosaurs did the deed.
Miroslav Petrasko (blog.hdrshooter.net)
Dinosaurs were the largest animals to ever walk Earth, and they ruled the planet for more than 160 million years. The long-necked Argentinosaurus, with back vertebrae almost two metres high, possibly grew…
With the royal baby due soon, there is much speculation on whether the family will be welcoming a Prince or a Princess of Cambridge. But perhaps science can tell us the answer, as new research from Stanford…
New research suggests that seeds could now be formed without the biological process of fertilisation.
CIMMYT
Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals. Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed the…
Researchers applied sunblock to the plumage of female blue tits to see how males reacted.
Marko_K
Rearing young is a costly business that often affects an individual’s own future survival or reproduction prospects. And so it makes sense for individuals to find ways to ensure the energy they spend on…