The 30-million-year-old virgin

The reason it’s surprising they’ve done without sex is that most multi-cellular organisms reproduce sexually, even though from a biological perspective, there’s a cost to sex. In fact, it would be much easier if you could reproduce on your own.

“You don’t have to find a mate,” says Johns Logsdon, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Iowa. “If you find a mate you don’t have to worry about things like venereal disease, you don’t have to worry about getting attacked in the process of a sex act,” says Logsdon.