Ending a relationship for women is hard enough as it is, but imagine if your ex left more than just a couple of t-shirts or various personal items. Imagine if they left their DNA…IN YOU.
A new study from Australia has shown that is is possible for fly offspring are able to resemble the mother’s previous sexual partner, even when conceived with the father’s sperm. The concept, known as telegony, is not a new one. Greek philosopher Aristotle first proposed the theory, which was largely used as a fear tactic to prevent women from copulating with different races or lower classes. This theory was accepted as science until the 1900’s, before more modern genetic theory was developed. As it turn out: telegony might have had some truth to it… for flies.
To test the theory of telegony, researchers manipulated male flies to grow to a certain height by changing the amount of nutrients in their diet. They then mated immature females with either large or small males. Later on, the now mature females were again mated with males of various sizes. The subsequent offspring were then studied, and what researchers observed was quite remarkable. Dr. Angela Crean, led researcher on the project, explained: “We found that even though the second male sired the offspring, offspring size was determined by what the mother’s previous mating partner ate as a maggot. Our new findings take this to a whole new level — showing a male can also transmit some of his acquired features to offspring sired by other males.”
Before you even ask, NO, the researchers are not yet sure if this phenomenon exists in any other species, but testimony of many experienced breeders suggests it may be.
As for humans, I will not even speculate, but Crean did tell Medical Daily in an email that she’s not ruling out this possibility. “There is no evidence of such effects in humans, but there has not been any research on this possibility in humans. There is a potential for such effects in mammals,” explained Crean. “For example, there is a lot of foetal DNA in maternal blood during pregnancy, and this could potentially play a role in such effects. There is also evidence in mammals that seminal fluid affects offspring development, so semen from one male could potentially influence the development of eggs fertilized by another male (which is what we think is happening in flies).”
For ethical reasons, this type of experiment would be almost impossible to perform on humans (obviously), but it does raise some really interesting questions…
Post time 2-2-2015 10:23 PM
变色卡
Something to ponder upon for now.
