Still looking for the perfect date for Valentine’s Day? Maybe this is the year to take a leaf from the female Komodo dragon’s book. When there are no males around,  female Komodo dragons can still produce fertile eggs! When scientists first documented this they thought that they were storing sperm from previous interactions with males but they discovered that even virgin female can produce viable eggs!

Sketch and fact contributed by Amelia Munson

Source: Watts, P. C., Buley, K. R., Sanderson, S., Boardman, W., Ciofi, C., & Gibson, R. (2006). Parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons. Nature, 444(7122), 1021-1022.