Thaindian News

November 12, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Zoological scientists have recently unearthed and identified a species of all-female lizards that was hitherto unregistered in the zoological treatises of the West. This petite lizard inhabits the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam. This is a rather matchless lizard named ‘Leiolepis Ngovantrii’ and has the prowess to procreate itself by cloning. The tale of how this lizard was detected and registered is amazingly exotic.

Ngo Van Tri happens to be a Vietnamese scientist hailing from the Vietnam Academy Of Science and Technology. He bumped into tanks at tiny diners in the rural zones of the Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. These tanks were loaded with lizards, the façades of which were conspicuously similar. Ngo became additionally fascinated when he detected that all the lizards seemed to be female.

Immediately, Ngo got in touch with his American buddy, Dr. Lee Grismer, who stems from the La Sierra University in California. Dr. Lee happens to be a herpetologist. He, along with his son, Jesse, who is a doctoral contender, positioned all their works aside and soared to Hanoi to evaluate the ‘discovery’ of the lizard.

The three experienced a tiresome journey on a motorcycle that lasted two days. They travelled to a restaurant, the boss of which had guaranteed to set aside a cluster of the lizards for analysis. Regrettably, the boss was in an inebriated condition when the three emerged in the restaurant. In that state of drunkenness, the boss had cooked all the lizards for his clients in a buffet. This error decimated the wishes of the three scientists, who then voyaged to different hotels and cafés in the area seeking the delivery of the lizards. Kids of the local zone were requested to collect as many lizards as they could.

Quickly, Dr. Lee, Jesse and Ngo had more than 60 lizards in their possession. They understood that they had discovered a species that had not been known to scientists in the past. Dr. Lee has excitedly articulated that this species of lizards was being vended and munched in rural Vietnamese restaurants in buffets for years, which the famous scientists had overlooked. Dr. Lee claimed that this lizard is a wholly fresh bloodline. DNA examinations on the lizards startlingly exposed that the lizards were female clones of their Moms. Some types of fish and reptiles can embrace parthenogenesis or self-fertilization on encountering inimical events such as pollution, hunting, etc.

Dr. Lee has voiced that this new lizard is a fusion of two similar lizard types in the area. But this freshly identified lizard is not sterile and has adjusted to the mounting populace of farmers around it. Dr. Lee has uttered that the indigenous human populace has plentiful data about the animal histories of the areas in which they live. The usage of local human knowledge has generated many lizard-related discoveries. He has stated that the indigenous communities of these regions already know about the lizards. It is just that the scientists are unaware.