If you were to answer that aesthetically the there should be 3 tomatoes instead of 4 you would probably be correct...however...this is the story
Lizard lunch
The story
The storyThe award for ‘most observant scientist during his lunch break’ this week must go to Ngo Van Tri of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology who noticed something odd about the tank of lizards at his local restaurant.
The reptile scientist noticed that the lizards were all female and of an identical size (and all heading for the deep fat fryer before he told the restaurant owner to hold on to them for a while). He contacted a US specialist, Dr Lee Grisner, who flew out to see this for himself.
Dr Grisner arrived at the restaurant after a gruelling journey only to find that the chef had cooked all of the lizards after getting drunk and so had to persuade locals to go out and catch some more. Luckily this lizard is common in the area and he managed to collect over 60 lizards which he noticed were all female.
After studying the appearance and carrying out DNA profiling he concluded that not only was this a new species, Leiolepis ngovantrii, but they were all genetically identical – this lizard reproduced by cloning.
In the world of vertebrates asexual reproduction is very rare but a number of species of reptile and fish do resort to parthenogenesis, or self-fertilization, especially when faced with adverse environments, pollution or over-hunting (or being held captive in Jurassic Park as the dinosaurs in the film of the same name). The eggs of the Leiolepis ngovantrii have a full complement of chromosomes already and so there is no need for fertilisation.
It is thought that the lizard arose from a hybridisation of two similar species. This normally results in sterile offspring, such as the mule, but in this case it produced offspring that could reproduce, just not in the usual
