Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest that cloning, not competition, dominated the Ediacaran seas, slowing evolution ...

A study has found that the reason why the evolution of the first animals to appear on Earth was delayed for over 10 million years was due to their reproductive methods. Early animals reproduced by ...

How do animals decide when to fight and when to walk, fly, slither, or swim away? Most research on animal conflict has focused on the short-term costs of single interactions, but a pair of behavioral ...

In the framework of an international research project, a team of scientists have demonstrated for the first time that asexual reproduction can be successful in the long term. The animal they studied ...

These unusual facts about animal sexuality expose the oddities associated with animal reproduction and sexual habits in nature. Whether it’s an eccentric animal reproductive method or a strange ...

Sexual reproduction only began to improve when early animals began facing more stress and competition ...

The common fruit fly normally needs a mate to reproduce. But scientists tinkering with its genes found the ones that can induce parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. For the first time, scientists ...

Not all species need sperm to fertilize an egg for sexual reproduction. Some species need sperm in order to induce completion of egg nucleus development, but then never use the sperm’s DNA. I describe ...

For some animals, reproduction comes at the ultimate cost—their own lives. While this may seem extreme, it's a natural strategy to maximize reproductive success. These species invest everything into ...

We take it for granted that humans find it more difficult to conceive as they grow older. But our recent study, which analysed data from 157 animal species, found that male reproductive ageing seems ...