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Origin of Species


Charles Darwin helped revolutionize the way scientists think about the origin and evolution of life on Earth.

There are three ways to define a species

By who breeds with whom

By looks alone - when you don't know much about their sex lives

By tracing the descent of populations through time


Sex partners define species

If you want to know how different species form, think about sex. As long as individuals have sex within a closed group - the species - each offspring continues that species. But if the group splits up, the new groups can form new species of their own.

There are millions of ways to have sex

To count the world's species, it helps to know who's having sex with whom. Two plants or animals can look, or even smell, almost alike, but if they can't mate, they're in separate species. By looking at anatomy and snooping into the sex lives of creatures the world over, scientists have named more than 1.4 million living species.

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