But what if it wasn't?

Finding a partner, maintaining a long-term partnership, and procreating at the right time, all of that is really difficult.

Wouldn't it be better to just…

make another me?

Hey everyone, thanks for watching DNews today, I'm Trace.

Six years ago, biologists discovered the Mycocepae smithii, a species of ant, which are all female.

They're asexual.

The queen clones herself, and if the eggs go unfertilized, they'll all hatch female.

Bonus, then they have a whole host of awesome new ants!

Sexuality is a lot of work, while asexual reproduction is exceedingly efficient, if kinda less fun, and sexual dimorphism, or splitting into binary sex pairs, limits the species.

Why do we have sex?

Aside from the pleasurable feelings associated with sex, the lowering of stress, strengthening of romantic bonds, and so on, those things are evolution's way of getting us to have sex.

That's not what I mean.

You could say, the why is easy, we have sex to reproduce, sex equals passing on genes and a promise of success, but that's still not what I'm trying to get to.

Like, why man?

The smithii doesn't get busy, she's asexual, she just clones herself.

Biologically speaking, why sex?

The question why we have sex at all has plagued scientists for decades.

Some basic theories from the 80s assume the genetic variety is beneficial, and sex allows us to purge bad DNA.

A book in the 90s invented the Red Queen Hypothesis, named after the character from Through the Looking Glass.

This describes sexual evolution like a race, we're all evolving to combat other organisms' mutations, and by doing so, we stay in balance.

Essentially, as parasites and predators evolve, the hosts and prey evolve to survive them, facilitating reproduction.

Of course, having two sexes is pretty inefficient when you look at it this way.

If I'm in a race to the death, I don't want to have to find a date for Saturday too!

They call this the cost of men in the book, because we don't necessarily NEED men.

Or do we?

I'm biased here, but I hope we do.

A new study in Nature Genetics claims to have a scientific way to look at this.

Sharing our genetic material makes us stronger and better able to fight disease.

Using genetic material from the 1000 Genomes Project, researchers compared genomes from Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Canadians of French descent and found some parts of our DNA are rewritten more often than others.

When binary species like humans mate, they each release genetic material that can allow the building blocks of genes, chromosomes, to combine and mutate beneficially.

Some mutations help us, while others increase our risk of diseases.

The rarely overwritten cold spots they refer to in the research, turns out, is where bad mutations survive.

But thanks to sex and these mutations, our genetic material worsens and gets better, and eventually, bad DNA is overwritten.

According to separately published research by the same 1000 Genomes Project, each human offspring has 60 genetic mutations, or about one for every 100 million letters of DNA.

Both asexual and sexual organisms mutate, but asexual organism mutations have to be so good that they overcome the wider population size, fitness, and mutation rate.

It's less likely a single mutated clone will succeed in a colony, versus the constant trial and error of all of these sexual organisms.

It doesn't mean sexuality is better, of course, it just means it's another way to get to that same success.

Bacteria aren't the only asexual animals.

Some reptiles, insects, and fish reproduce without males around, just like those ants.

So, binary sexuality isn't a hard and fast rule.

You know, some are longer and seductive, you know, don't worry about it.

Why we have sex at all is still a mystery, but this pulls back the curtain just a little, and in the end, asexuality might be faster, but sexuality's DNA lottery has its benefits too.

I know you're going to comment on this one, so maybe you already have started commenting.

Why do you think, biologically, we humans are not asexual?

Get down there and talk it out.

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Bye!