Some Vietnamese locals have long enjoyed dining on a type of self-cloning lizard, but researchers only recently stumbled upon the species' existence.
The all-female, self-cloning lizard discovered in a Vietnamese restaurant by Ngo Van Tri, Lee Grismer and Jesse Grismer. Credit: Lee Grismer
A Vietnamese researcher was first to notice a restaurant selling oddly similar looking lizards, and sent pictures to a father-son pair of herpetologists (reptile experts) in the U.S. The researchers suspected that they had found an all-female lizard species, and so the U.S. pair immediately booked a flight to Vietnam.
Upon arrival at the restaurant, they were dismayed to find that a drunken restaurateur had served up all the lizards to his customers, according to National Geographic. But their disappointment receded once they realized that the lizards were commonly found in restaurants and in the wild.
Reptiles that can clone themselves through parthenogensis are not uncommon: Monitor lizards, boa constrictors and even Komodo dragons have been observed giving birth without the genetic contribution of males. Researchers think that the latest example may represent a hybrid between two related lizard species.