All Hail These Lady Salamanders, Who Ain’t Got Time for Dating Drama

While some Ambystoma salamanders still have babies the old school way, this particular strain has managed to bypass the whole mating thing and create their own offspring. How do they do it? Oh, you know, the simple way: cloning. 

While cloning sounds cool AF, scientists say it’s not a good long-term strategy because there’s no genetic variation in the mix, which doesn’t bode well for the long-term survival of a species. 

Sign up for Women’s Health’s new newsletter, So This Happened, to get the day’s trending stories and health studies.

Luckily, the lady lizards found a workaround. Most salamanders don’t have sex; the males leave “sperm packets” for females to pick up. Somehow, the female salamanders have been stealing DNA from those packets, allowing them to mix up their cloned DNA, and lay eggs.

Besides all that, these salamanders have other superpowers: When their tails are cut off (hey, life happens), they regrow them 1.5 times faster than other salamanders.

Is there room in this girl squad for more? Because…wow.