clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk   
A fish species, which is all female, has survived for 70,000 years without reproducing sexually, experts believe.

Amazon Molly

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh think the Amazon Molly may be employing special genetic survival "tricks" to avoid becoming extinct.

The species, found in Texas and Mexico, interacts with males of other species to trigger its reproduction process.

The offspring are clones of their mother and do not inherit any of the male's DNA.


Typically, when creatures reproduce asexually, harmful changes creep into their genes over many generations.

Researchers calculated the time to extinction for the fish based on modelling genetic changes over many thousands of generations.


They are now able to say conclusively, for the first time, the fish ought to have become extinct within the past 70,000 years, based on the current simple models.