As if being able to re-grow a tail isn’t cool enough, some species of whiptail lizards (genus Cnemidophorus) have another trick: They can clone themselves. These species actually consist completely of females able to reproduce by parthenogenesis.
The original sexless females, known as parthenogens, come from the hybridization of two separate lizard lines. The parthenogen has one copy of chromosomes from its mother, and one analogous but slightly different copy from its father. It can give rise to offspring that are their exact clones, without their two genetic copies recombining.
Some researchers hypothesize that the ability of sharks to reproduce via parthenogenesis is what allowed them to become one of the oldest species on the planet: When males were scarce, females could just make progressively younger copies of themselves to wait for Mr. Right Shark to come around.
DISCOVER Magazine has more.
The New Mexico State Reptile is the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard.
I try to attract them to my garden because they eat garden worms.