These Fleas Showed Scientists Why Humans Have Sex

If you ask anyone why they have sex, you’re going to get as many answers as there are people that you’ve asked. Sex is a complex thing, and people have a lot of different personal reasons for having it. Some people do it strictly because it feels good, and others do it because it’s a way to further our species. Still others have their own reasons that are simply too varied to list off without making that its own article. However, science appears to have proven why humans have sex. After all, there are a lot more species on our planet that can reproduce without having sex at all, so why do we need to? The answer lies in the last creature you’d expect, which is probably a creature you might not have even heard of until now. This animal doesn’t just reproduce in a way that’s totally unique, it sheds light on why humans reproduce through sex. Here’s what you need to know about the real reason why humanity has sex to reproduce, and it’s bound to surprise you.

If you ask anyone why they have sex, they’ll tell you something different. This is because humans are different from each other and have different reasonings for doing similar things. Some people have sex because it feels good, others do it because it strengthens their romantic relationships, and others do it because they want to further the species.

However, many species don’t reproduce using sex at all. There are a ton of animals that don’t reproduce using sex, and plants don’t reproduce using sex at all. Instead of doing that, they simply clone themselves to create offspring.

That takes up a lot less energy. If you’re a particularly nerdy person or you just love science, you might ruminate on why we need sex at all when you’re feeling done with dating. After all, plants don’t need sex to continue on with their species, so why should humans? Why did we evolve to need it when cloning just seems more efficient?

That’s what researchers have been trying to find out. Since the advent of science, researchers have been trying to figure out why humans are the way that they are. One of the many questions they are trying to answer has to do with why we have sex. This question doesn’t just stump the average person, it stumps experts, too.

However, researchers from the University of Stirling might have figured it out. A group of researchers might have come up with the answer to one of the oldest questions anyone has ever asked. Believe it or not, the answer lies within a creature that you might not have ever heard of until now: the water flea.

Let’s talk about water fleas for a bit. They’re an order of small crustaceans called the Cladocera that are everywhere in aquatic habitats but pretty scarce in oceans. There are 620 species of water flea that have been recognized, and there are a lot more that are un-described at all.

They’re really small. The average Cladocera is only millimeters long, with the distinctive exception of the Leptodora, which is 18 millimeters long. They don’t look like bugs or anything, but they do have a set of antennae and only one eye. They even have a set of antennae for swimming.

We can go on and on about water fleas, but there’s one thing we need to talk about that’s relevant here. While some species reproduce sexually and others reproduce by asexual cloning, water fleas do things a little differently. They actually reproduce using both methods: they reproduce sexually with partners and asexually by cloning themselves.

This phenomenon is called cyclical parthenogenesis. That means that the water flea uses different methods of reproduction during different times. When conditions are good for the water flea, reproductions happens through cloning, where the water flea will only produce female clones. However, when times are bad, males get produced and sexual reproduction happens, which results in a long lasting, dormant egg.

Those eggs can move over long distances. The eggs produced by sexual reproduction end up getting transported to different places by the wind, and then they hatch when life is good for the water flea again. That allows water fleas to show up in a lot of different places.

It gets more interesting. Water fleas have stronger babies when they reproduce sexually. The eggs produced by sexual reproduction were more than twice as resistant to infectious diseases as their cloned counterparts.

That means that sexual reproduction makes stronger babies. While the water flea can make more babies with asexual reproduction, the sexually reproduced water flea babies are more likely to be able to survive and pass on their genes. The same is true of humans. While we don’t asexually reproduce at any point, sex has made us stronger as a species.

Sex is the reason why certain traits exist. When we look at certain animals, we can see that some of them are actually able to be distinguished by gender. For example, male peacocks have might brighter feathers. stags have antlers, and female lions don’t have manes when male lions do.

Sex is also the reason why we’re good at resisting diseases. Sex allows our offspring to be able to be healthier than we would be if we reproduced through cloning. This is the reason why humans and other species evolved to have sex despite the fact that sexual reproduction takes a lot more effort.

This is definitely something worth thinking about. Whenever we get really frustrated with dating, we often remind ourselves that going through adversity in this department makes us better equipped to be great life partners in the future. The same is true of us physically: the reason why we’re able to exist and thrive as a species is because generations before us reproduced sexually, which actually served to make us healthier.