By Susan Milius
For the first time, biologists have found an animal, a gender-bent mite, living and procreating quite well despite the supposed handicap of carrying genes from just one parent.
Among other animals, the mom-and-pop plan rules, explains Andrew R. Weeks of Monash University in Clayton, Australia. People, parrots, perch, polyps, and all the animals in between usually inherit one copy of a set of chromosomes from each of their parents, a system called diploidy.